THOMASVILLE - The recent upgrade of Brookwood School servers and personal computers has been so successful, the independent school attracted the attention of Intel Corporation's researchers and technology experts.

In mid-January, an Intel crew traveled to Thomasville from California, hiring a professional video outfit out of Tallahassee to videotape interviews and campus scenes at Brookwood. The resulting video production will be used by Intel to communicate to the company's "channel partners" the success of Brookwood's Intel vPro workstations, Intel Xeon processor 5500 family of servers and the Intel Modular Server.

Jason Bellflowers, the president and CEO of Virtual World Technologies in Valdosta, was selected by the Brookwood administration last year to evaluate the school's technology needs. After talking with faculty and staff, then surveying Brookwood's computer labs, classroom computers, and the servers that had tied the school's technology system together, Bellflowers determined that the Intel vPro platform would best allow his company to design a new state-of-the-art system for Brookwood.

Brookwood Headmaster Mike Notaro said, "Here at Brookwood, I wanted to find a way to upgrade our technology with the highest efficiency not only for our faculty, staff, and students, but also to reduce our energy use and cost."

Since Virtual World Techologies revamped and upgraded to the new computers and server system at Brookwood, Notaro said, "There has been very little if any maintenance needed."

In addition, he added, "Our technical people, who most importantly are classroom teachers, are provided more time in the classroom and for teaching preparation, with minimal time chasing down individual computer problems."

Bellflowers came to the Brookwood campus from Valdosta to be interviewed for the Intel video production.

The school's upgrade, along with Virtual I.T. managed services, Bellflowers said, allows his company to "take care of issues pro-actively."

The new "managed services approach," he explained, provides the school a return on its investment in only two years.

"It's changed the dynamics of our relationships with our clients,"  Bellflowers said. "Instead of being paid when things break, we are paid to keep things running smoothly. It's in our best interest that everything is in pitch perfect condition, 24/7."

In all, Brookwood replaced 154 computers with the new PCs built by Virtual World Technologies.

Keith Massey, who heads the math department and serves as Brookwood's dean of students, also acts as the school's technology coordinator. He says the energy savings because of the school's new technology system is $1,400 per month.

"We have no more PC crashes in classrooms," Massey said. "Our teachers are delighted with the new system and our students are pleased and excited by what they're now able to do with the computers."

Massey said that the school previously depended on four servers that had been purchased over nine years ago.

"Before we moved to the Intel Modular Server, usually one of four servers would not be functioning properly, and on any given day I would have to re-boot a server."

That's no longer a problem, Massey explained.

"Also, 60 teachers accessing servers 10 to 20 times every hour has caused no problem," he said.

Other advantages include more storage space for teachers' online documents, the ability to expand in the future, work is more efficient with less down time, the speed of the system is far greater than the previous one, plus the network is secure.

"The biggest benefit," Massey said, "is that having Intel Xeon-based servers means we simply don't have to worry about the system."

The video feature about Brookwood's technology system soon will be posted by Intel on various Internet sites. Meanwhile, Emma Hitzke, Intel's channel marketing manager, has posted a blog about the project at www.tinyurl.com/intelbrookwood

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For additional information, contact Jason Bellflowers at Virtual World Technologies in Valdosta, 877-253-8205, or Keith Massey, technology coordinator at Brookwood School, (229) 226-8070 Ext. 92.