NEXINEO presented its solution at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Zaragoza.
NEXINEO CEO Stanislav Chlepko discussed methods of improving the effectiveness of computer equipment used by schools in Spain at the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services. He likewise presented a success story from a Secondary Technical School of Electrical Engineering in Slovakia, which replaced 350 traditional PCs with the NEXINEO system.
In the current challenging economic and environmental situation, organisations, including schools, are looking for effective solutions that would save operating costs while also being eco-friendly.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when students had to stay at home and switch to online learning, many governments across Europe had to purchase millions of laptops to facilitate online schoolwork. The trend of every student having their own laptop may seem tempting, but it also brings many negative consequences.
The first undesirable impact is high operating costs. It is highly difficult and particularly expensive to manage hundreds of laptops at one school, and the purchase of new laptops is likewise a constant financial burden for schools. The electricity consumption of traditional PCs is relatively high / can be upwards of 100W per computer / which also puts a further strain on the school budget, as the price of electricity has increased rapidly in recent years.
Another undesirable consequence is the negative impact on the environment. Every laptop contains batteries and many other components that contribute to excessive pollution during production and disposal. Also, the high electricity consumption of computers further causes high CO2 emissions.
The answer to the question of how to solve these problems may lie in virtualisation. Global manufacturers of microprocessors and graphics cards have made a huge leap forward in recent years, and the performance of components such as graphic cards or processors has grown rapidly. This works very well in virtualisation, when it is no longer necessary for each student to have a separate computer or laptop. They can be replaced by a single powerful server which shares the performance with the entire classroom or school. And this is precisely the solution being developed by our company NEXINEO. With our solution, instead of a computer or laptop, each student has only a miniature NEO Virtual Desktop Device attached to a screen, which is connected to the central NEXI GO server via a standard LAN network and which is controlled using a standard keyboard and mouse. The central NEXI GO server can be located directly in the classroom or in the school server room. Instead of dozens or hundreds of computers, you then have only one powerful NEXI GO server for the entire school, which shares the performance with the NEO Virtual Desktop Devices.
Virtualised computer classrooms deliver significant ecological and economic savings. The consumption of the NEO Virtual Desktop Device is only 5W and compared to traditional PCs delivers up to 90% energy savings. The NEO Virtual Desktop Device does not contain any mechanical parts such as a hard drive, graphics card, or cooling fan, which contributes to their minimal mechanical failure rate and long service life. The minimum service life of the NEO Virtual Desktop Device is 10 years and it is much cheaper to replace one server after five years than to buy dozens or hundreds of new computers.
Success story
At one secondary technical school of electrical engineering, they had a problem with more than 350 computers having excessive total cost of ownership (TCO) and school was looking for a more affordable solution that would also be environmentally friendly. We replaced these 350 old computers with a new NEXINEO system with 16 Rack NEXI GO servers, providing performance for 350 NEO devices located throughout the school.
And with Nexineo’s solution, they managed to achieve the following:
- The lifespan of NEO devices is 10 years and during this time they will save more than EUR 41,000 on electricity. The electricity consumption of regular computers can be upwards of 100W, and the electricity consumption of a single NEO device is only 5W. So they reduce their power usage by 90% every day.
- Over ten years, they will save more than EUR 77,000 on replacing old computers, because after 5 years they will not have to buy 350 new computers, instead only 16 NEXI GO servers, which is much cheaper. The minimum lifespan of NEO devices is 10 years.
- Thanks to the minimal failure rate of NEO devices and their minimal management requirements, school will save an additional EUR 26,000 on service work and spare parts over ten years.
As you can see, one school with 350 old computers will save more than EUR 144,000 over 10 years thanks to the long lifespan of our NEO devices, their minimal failure rate, minimal management requirements, and with the electricity consumption of one NEO device only 5 W.
In addition, this school will also save 2 tons of electronic waste, since the weight of one computer is around 7 kilograms and the weight of one NEO device is only 300 grams. The NEXINEO system in this school will also save more than 21 tons of CO2 emissions thanks to the low electricity consumption of the NEO devices.
This school not only its solved technical difficulties but also promoted everything they had implemented and positioned themselves as an innovative, sustainable, and eco-friendly school.
Moreover, some of their classes required the use of more demanding applications such as Autocad, Revit, Inventor, Tinkercad, SketchUp or Scratch, which can all be easily used in classrooms up to 30 students, with the right configuration.
NEXINEO has received numerous international awards for its solutions. At the SIMO Educación fair in Madrid, NEXINEO won the Premio SIMO innova, aimed at promoting the most innovative projects. Currently, NEXINEO has nearly 700 deployments in five European Union countries, and its system benefits more than 300,000 students.
You can watch a recording of the event on YouTube: CANAL EXPOSITIVO Educación 2030
