Modernizing data center infrastructure isn’t just an IT upgrade—it’s a strategic investment in outcomes. In this episode of Data Insights, Allyson Klein speaks with Jeniece Wnorowski and Justin Baker, Systems Administrator Lead at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, about how the school is rethinking infrastructure to better support students, faculty, and a lean IT team.
Rose-Hulman’s challenge was familiar: aging, fragmented systems that limited agility, slowed maintenance, and made it difficult to support increasingly compute-intensive engineering applications. The solution wasn’t adding complexity—but simplifying and modernizing.
Key insights from the conversation include:
- How Azure Local and Azure Virtual Desktop enable high-performance access to tools like SolidWorks and Ansys without tying students to specific devices or labs
- Why consolidating infrastructure reduced maintenance windows from hours to minutes
- How GPU-enabled workloads improved reliability and sped up recovery when systems failed
- What “running more with less” looks like for a small IT team managing mission-critical systems
- Why infrastructure decisions directly affect student experience and learning flexibility
- Rather than forcing students to rely on increasingly powerful personal laptops, Rose-Hulman is shifting toward centralized, datacenter-hosted application delivery—removing friction and improving access across campus.