Novell Connects Teachers and Students in the City of Stockholm

  • Education services delivered to more than 100,000 students and teachers through identity management and portal solution
  • Enhances communication between teachers and students and provides secure access to resources over the Web
  • Integrated solution from Novell improves communication, IT efficiency, and the potential for learning throughout the City

7 December 2004

The City of Stockholm ensures its citizens are well connected and well informed by providing services to nearly one million residents through a high-speed, optical network. However, its school system was struggling to connect teachers and students because its identity information was distributed across disparate sources—a public directory for civilians including students, and a more secure, administrative directory for teachers and civil servants. As a result, it was difficult for teachers and students to collaborate, much less share documents.

The City of Stockholm decided to integrate all of its identities and build a portal that would bridge the gap between teachers and students. The Novell identity management and portal solution synchronizes and integrates identity information into a global directory to maintain a single source of accurate user identity information. The new education portal includes access to e-mail and shared educational resources, such as online encyclopedias. By integrating applications into the portal, teachers and students are able to securely access resources from any computer, rather than just a limited number of school workstations.

The City of Stockholm teamed up with Pulsen, a Novell partner in Sweden, to create its new education portal based on Novell® exteNdTM, with Novell eDirectoryTM and Novell Nsure® Identity Manager for identity management and Novell GroupWise® Web Access and Novell iFolder® for collaboration and file management.

“We are a big fan of Novell technology,” said Lars Pehrsson, senior project leader in the IT Department of the City of Stockholm. “The whole portfolio of products is flexible and open so we have the freedom to build all kinds of solutions.”

The City first created a global directory for its 100,000 students and 10,000 teachers and staff using Novell eDirectory. To maintain a single source of accurate identity information, it deployed Novell Nsure Identity Manager to synchronize information from other applications, such as the Human Resources system and the curriculum database. Teachers and students now have secure access to resources with a single ID and password, based on user information stored in eDirectory.

Novell exteNd enabled the City of Stockholm to design, build and implement a new educational portal that enhances communication between teachers and students. By integrating the portal with the directory, the City enables teachers and students to securely access information through any Web browser based on their identity attributes such as school, class, grade and curriculum.

Hans Fernstrom, City of Stockholm coordinator of ICT solutions for schools, said, “We needed to quickly create a solution to satisfy the demands of our teachers and staff. We wanted to create a straightforward portal with a clean interface. Because Novell exteNd is so modular and flexible, we could choose our portlets and install just what we wanted.”

GroupWise Web Access is integrated into the portal so users can e-mail each other from any computer using a standard Web browser, rather than logging into a school machine. The schools also save money and time without the need to install GroupWise client software on 20,000 workstations. Novell eGuide provides a white pages directory of all teachers and students throughout Stockholm, improving communication by making it easy for teachers and students to find and contact one another.

Novell iFolder provides secure network file storage for teachers, allowing them to access files from any computer. It automatically synchronizes changes to files so they can stay up to date whether at home or school. Teachers can also create shared folders for specific classes to easily distribute information to all their students.

“Our primary goal is to the increase the quality of education, and we do that if we can help teachers use technology efficiently,” Fernstrom said. “A new portal seems like a simple solution, but we are seeing dramatic benefits already. Novell exteNd and Nsure have helped us broaden our horizons and have laid the groundwork for future enhancements, such as allowing parents to securely view information about their child's assignments, grades and attendance.”

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) is a leading provider of infrastructure software and services to over 50,000 customers in 43 countries. With more than 20 years of experience in data center, workgroup and desktop solutions, Novell's 6,000 employees, 5,000 partners and support centers around the world are meeting customer requirements for identity-driven computing and Linux solutions. By providing enterprise-class software and support for commercial and open source software, Novell delivers increased operating flexibility and choice at a lower total cost of ownership. More information about Novell can be found at http://www.novell.com.

Novell, Nsure, GroupWise, Novell iFolder and Ximian are registered trademarks; eDirectory, exteNd and Nterprise are trademarks; and Ngage is a service mark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. SUSE is a registered trademark of SUSE LINUX AG, a Novell business.

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