Reducing Software Costs and Improving Performance with Server Based Computing

SITE 2015 - Las Vegas, NV, United States, March 1-6, 2015Classroom computing in graduate education continues to grow as more and more schools include the use of sophisticated software programs in their curriculums. Unfortunately many of these statistics and modeling applications are quite expensive and require significant processing power. The Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School is using server-based computing to control software costs and improve the performance of applications. This paper describes the school’s use of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services to deliver applications to networked student computers. The virtual delivery of the software, which runs on a server, eliminates the need to install the software on every student computer. Depending on the software licensing structure, this can significantly reduce the required number of licenses. For some applications it can also dramatically improve performance

Thin-clients in the Classroom; Software Compatibility and a Survey of Systems

Prepared for E-Learn 2006, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, October 200. The article of record as published may be located at http://www.editlib.org/p/23714Thin-client computing devices have several advantages over traditional networked PCs in an academic classroom environment. The most significant of these are lower cost, ease of maintenance and administration, lower power requirements and increased reliability. This study examined a variety of Windows applications being used in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School. The majority of the programs were found to be compatible with the thin-client architecture. The study also found there are a wide variety of thin client devices on the market and it is important to test prospective devices to determine whether they satisfy all of the user's functional requirements

Apple App Store as a business model supporting U.S. Navy

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Acquisition Research Symposium, Thursday Sessions, Volume IINaval Open Architecture (NOA) is the confluence of business and technical practices yielding modular, interoperable systems that adhere to open standards with published interfaces. This approach significantly increases opportunities for innovation and competition, enables re-use of components, facilitates rapid technology insertion, and reduces maintenance constraints. A key enabler of the NOA initiative is the Software Hardware Asset Reuse Enterprise (SHARE) repository. The repository was created in August 2006 to facilitate the reuse of software and thereby reduce future development costs. The total benefit of the repository will correspond to the quality and quantity of the applications deposited into it. Indisputably, the most successful software repository in the public sector is the Apple App Store. As of March 2012, Apple listed more than 500,000 available applications. The purpose of this research is to examine the business model of the App Store to identify which of its effective business practices might be applicable to the SHARE repository.Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Apple App Store as a Business Model Supporting U.S. Navy Requirements

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program)Naval Open Architecture (NOA) is the confluence of business and technical practices yielding modular, interoperable systems that adhere to open standards with published interfaces. This approach significantly increases opportunities for innovation and competition, enables re-use of components, facilitates rapid technology insertion, and reduces maintenance constraints. A key enabler of the NOA initiative is the Software Hardware Asset Reuse Enterprise (SHARE) repository. The repository was created in August 2006 to facilitate the reuse of software and thereby reduce future development costs. The total benefit of the repository will correspond to the quality and quantity of the applications deposited into it. Indisputably, the most successful software repository in the public sector is the Apple App Store. As of October 2011, Apple lists more than 425,000 applications available. The purpose of this research is to examine the business model of the App Store to identify which of its effective business practices might be applicable to the SHARE repository.Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

ACMS: a prototype expert database for air combat maneuvering

In combat situations, a fighter pilot must deal with a large number of input variables and decision alternatives in a very short time. To have the greatest chance of success in an encounter, the pilot must have a viable game plan in mind before he engages with an enemy aircraft. This game plan comes about through many hours of expert training in various scenarios of actual and hypothetical situations. This study describes the design and implementation of a prototype expert database training system for air combat maneuvering. The architecture of the system integrates a rule-based expert system with a database in a loosely coupled fashion. The expert system component of the system uses its rule base, access to the database, the pilot input to arrive at its decision.http://archive.org/details/acmsprototypeexp1094530697Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Classroom computing using on demand desktop streaming

Two of the most popular choices for classroom computing are laptop PCs and thin-client devices. Deciding between the two is often a difficult decision because both platforms have their respective advantages. Modern laptops give excellent performance because of their powerful processors and large amounts of memory. Thin-clients reduce maintenance costs through centralized configuration management. The Naval Postgraduate School is achieving the advantages of both platforms by employing a new technology called On Demand Desktop Streaming (ODDS). ODDS allows the school to maintain all of the laptop software, including the operating system, on a network server. The internal hard drives of the classroom laptops can even be removed to provide a near zero maintenance workstation environment. This paper describes the school's experiences with stand-alone networked PCs, thin-clients, and the new ODDS system in a classroom setting.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited