Enabling Hypervisor Environment for Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness of Training Programmes - A Case Study at NAARM

Abstract

The National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) was established by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) at Hyderabad, in 1976, to address issues related to agricultural research and education management. The Academy also renders services for building IP portfolios like patents and geographical indications to various stakeholders including farmers and scientists. Keeping in view the increasing national and global need to integrate agriculture with agribusiness for raising rural incomes, and the increased emphasis on the creation, dissemination, application and exchange of knowledge in this vital area, the Academy has recently initiated post graduate education programmes and set up an Agribusiness Knowledge Centre. In the above mentioned scenario, NAARM also conducting many training programmes/courses over the year and there is lot of time and money being invested into purchasing physical machines and software. There is a need of maintaining specific set of software required for each training. The Coordinators of the training programmes has to ensure beforehand that all the machines are working fine and all the software required for that training got installed in all machines and working without any issues. This requirement of preparedness for training programmes has been avoided completely by establishing a private cloud which can provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) at our organization. At the end of programmes may it be a regular or refresher course, coordinators has supposed to be evaluate the participants by tools like quizzes and exams. NAARM is using SynchronEyes Student-Teacher software for evaluation purpose. Many issues were there in this examinations system because of network, virus and power problems. This also has been completely avoided by establishing a hybrid cloud.