EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Vector Solutions | July 04, 2022
The 2022 SmartBrief EdTech Readers' Choice Awards, which honor the best educational technology products based on reader voting, have chosen Vector Training from Vector Solutions as a winner. For professional development, the online training management system for schools was chosen as the winner.
“We are honored to have been selected as a winner by SmartBrief’s audience of industry professionals, including educators and administrators. It's not an easy time to work in schools, and we're proud to offer engaging and effective training that builds the skills of our nation's educators to help them create safer, smarter, better communities.”
-Vector Solutions Head of Product for Education, Rob Buelow
The SmartBrief EdTech Readers' Choice Awards were created by SmartBrief, a digital news service for K–12 education professionals, to recognize businesses and innovations that have had a significant influence on the education sector. In addition to giving staff and students access to hundreds of expert-authored online training courses, Vector Training—previously known as SafeSchools—also makes it simple for administrators to track and administer those trainings on a flexible, easy web-based platform. Additionally, districts are able to design and deliver unique courses through the system using Vector Training.
Vector Solutions, a top provider of software and training to assist schools in making their operations and communities safer, smarter, and better, has just won another education award. The company's educational solutions have also won recognition in the past year from THE Journal, Campus Technology, and Tech & Learning.
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ONLINE EDUCATION
Gurobi Optimization | July 27, 2022
Gurobi Optimization, LLC, creator of the world’s fastest mathematical optimization solver, announced the launch of Gurobi Compass, its new expert-led training program designed to make the power of optimization more accessible to all.Because Gurobi’s user base now extends far beyond Operations Research professionals, Gurobi Compass aims to help every role have a successful and seamless user experience—across product owners, project managers, software developers, and IT professionals. The program utilizes hands-on workshops, live instruction, and on-demand videos to teach students in the format that best suits their needs.
Dr. Kostja Siefen, head of Gurobi’s Technical Account Management team, explains, Every product and every project team is unique. That's why training can never be a one-size-fits-all program.
And indeed, Gurobi Compass offers highly customized training packages, which are compiled after a complimentary listen-and-learn session where clients can express their specific needs and challenges.
The following are just a few examples of topics Gurobi Compass covers to help all members of a team successfully navigate Gurobi’s products:
Integration and deployment: The program’s trainers can teach users about the wide variety of options available for integrating Gurobi software components into their optimization solutions. Users will explore APIs, client/server separation, and flexible cloud and container deployments.
Modeling techniques: Gurobi Compass can help users translate business problems and dilemmas into proper mathematical representations, which Gurobi can then quickly and easily solve. This training draws on a range of techniques to help modelers develop high-performance model generators that are less error-prone and use fewer lines of code.
Performance tuning: For those who already have a working knowledge of mathematical modeling, Gurobi Compass’s performance tuning module can help users discover new approaches to improving model performance, so they can get the most out of Gurobi’s technology in the least amount of time.
Each of these training modules is customizable, but Gurobi can also go a step further by creating bespoke models on the specific topics that matter most to a team.
“Our Gurobi Compass course was the perfect mix of optimization theory and hands-on exercises. Attendees are now more able to think about our day-to-day work through the lens of optimization. The Gurobi trainers were knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly. We had a lot of fun!”
-Members of Gambit Research tested out the program and said of the experience
Each Gurobi Compass training module is designed for up to 150 participants, takes two to three hours to complete, and includes take-home exercises that allow users to immediately practice and apply what they’ve learned.
Gurobi can even combine self-paced training on their learning platform with on-site, hands-on lessons for the most complete learning experience possible.
To learn more about how Gurobi Compass can help your team get acquainted with the world’s most powerful solver, visit www.gurobi.com/products/gurobi-compass/.
About Gurobi Optimization
With Gurobi’s decision intelligence technology, you can make optimal business decisions in seconds. From workforce scheduling, portfolio management, and marketing optimization, to supply chain design, and everything in between, Gurobi identifies your optimal solution, out of trillions of possibilities. As the leader in decision intelligence, Gurobi delivers easy-to-integrate, full-featured software and best-in-class support, with an industry-leading 97% customer satisfaction rating. Founded in 2008, Gurobi has operations across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Over 2,500 global customers across 40+ industries run on Gurobi, including SAP, Air France, and the National Football League, as well as half of the Fortune 10 and 70% of top global tech companies
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
rimini street | August 24, 2022
Rimini Street, Inc. a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced that the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has switched from Oracle to Rimini Street for improved support and security of its Oracle database and technology platforms. In doing so, the University has slashed wait times for support requests, enjoyed improved service quality and innovative, advanced security to protect its database and application middleware. Rimini Street is also helping the University manage through the ongoing IT skills shortage by reducing the amount of IT labor required for support and instead, allowing resources to focus on the rapid transition to hybrid learning. UTS is one of Australia’s leading universities, with around 45,000 students and 4,000 staff. The IT department employs around 300 staff and is responsible for the digital experiences supporting the people, processes, and culture at the university. The University faced challenges during the pandemic including a massive shift to online learning and remote work, and a growing IT skills shortage. The large decline in the number of international students enrolling in Australia has also seen IT budgets shrink. Because of these limitations, UTS needed to refocus its strategic resources more efficiently.
“UTS, like all universities in Australia, has had to rapidly transition to a hybrid learning model that includes classroom and online service delivery. There are many innovations and technologies needed for the transition to hybrid learning; budgets are tightening across the board and the quality-of-service delivery expectations remain the same or higher, “Students can now log into their online classes from almost anywhere in the world which adds a new layer of complexity for the IT team. Fast, reliable, and secure systems are needed to keep up with the changing world and to remain a leading provider in the education market.”
Daniel Benad,group vice president and regional general manager,Australia,New Zealand and Oceania,Rimini Street
Focusing on the big issues with more time and money to spare Maintaining their Oracle database landscape was draining on the university’s IT budget and internal resources. Support tickets were often slow to be resolved by the software vendor, preventing IT staff from completing other system maintenance and responding quickly to new IT challenges. Staff were preoccupied with keeping databases operating properly in a rapidly scaling up environment and had little time to focus on university initiatives to support growth and innovation. “Skilled staff are only getting more expensive to hire and retaining these employees just to work on support and operational tasks for our enterprise software is no longer sustainable,” said Brian Kelly, Head of IT Operations at UTS. “We’ve had to really maximize the resources we have to keep our IT services growing, improving and meeting the needs of the university.” In addition, as UTS increasingly moved towards a hybrid learning model for its students, and a remote working environment for its staff, cost, capability, supportability, and flexibility were key to guaranteeing robust and reliable IT services. The rapid move into the remote workspace also opened new avenues and risks for cybersecurity attacks and breaches. As the number and location of users increased, so too did opportunities for unauthorized access. As such, the University was conscious it needed to increase the security of its Oracle software, particularly as routine patching was a costly and time-consuming endeavour for its IT team that did not necessarily provide the fastest protection model in the case of a discovered vulnerability. “UTS is relatively new to the hybrid working and learning space, and it’s important to be mindful of risks from such a rapid transformation,” said Kelly. The University began to look at ways to get improved support, better security and reduced operating costs for its Oracle Database landscape while also reducing the resource drain on its IT team. UTS turned to Rimini Street’s enterprise software support and security solutions. Lowering Costs and Response Times Each Rimini Street client benefits from the Company’s flexible, premium-level enterprise software support model, including its industry-leading Service Level Agreement of 10-minute response times for all critical Priority 1 cases. All clients are also assigned a Primary Support Engineer with an average of 20 years’ experience in enterprise software and backed by a team of functional and technical engineers. In addition, Rimini Street’s Database Management Services provide UTS with new expert skills from skilled and responsive engineers. Since partnering with Rimini Street, resolving support tickets is easier and quicker, with expert engineers available to respond to challenges at any time. “Being able to shrink how much time is spent on routine work has really allowed us to prioritise the bigger picture, and Rimini Street gives us time back in our day,” said Kelly. “The team is no longer worried about how long a patch or upgrade will take, how long it’ll take to get issues resolved, or how many hours they’ll have to dedicate to something routine. Rimini Street has taken care of that for us, and having such a quick turnaround for support has really eased up our workload. “Rimini Street gives us high-quality support for these business-as-usual activities without breaking our budget. Being able to be flexible with what senior ICT staff we hire means we’re putting a microscope on what our team actually needs, rather than allowing necessity to dictate it.” Rimini Street Protect - Proactive Security Having the time and resource availability enabled UTS to develop and deploy additional enterprise security enhancements. Further, Rimini Street’s security solutions gave UTS peace of mind that it would be secure and remain live while it implemented the additional security enhancements. “Completed security enhancements include secure identity management and access controls,” said Kelly. “Thanks to Rimini Street, we now have time and budget to spare and we are now looking at developing and deploying additional security measures utilizing a cloud-first strategy. We’re also working on automating service management and migrating to the cloud anything that improves the quality of user experience.” “UTS is yet another example of an institution that has benefited from Rimini Street’s comprehensive and effective database support and security,” said Benad. “As international borders continue to open and students choose Australia as an education destination, UTS’ improved service delivery and flexibility supporting a hybrid education model will play a huge part in improving the student learning experience.”
About Rimini Street, Inc.
Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a Russell 2000® Company, is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company offers premium, ultra-responsive and integrated application management and support services that enable enterprise software licensees to save significant costs, free up resources for innovation and achieve better business outcomes. To date, more than 4,200 Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries have relied on Rimini Street as their trusted application enterprise software products and services provider.
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