@swijeyakumar - yes there are many excellent companies that will help organizations implement open source solutions. To achieve success the project leaders and executives have to have a clear vision, scope and a business objective that has demand and solves a problem. Disasters happen when people think vendors will do everything for them - even define the requirements. Vendor management and contract negotiation has to be done by strong internal people. Sometimes people go after implementing a product rather than a solution.

Do any of you have exapmles of software companies who have partnered well with academia and what worked well vs what was a disaster?

@jabailo @Alison - thanks for sharing several good ideas.

@Nicole - yes I think partnerships between industry and academia could also provide incredible opportunities for collaborative research in these types of environments.

@Mr Roques - yes that is how universities are using this. Labs/libraries could provide general purpose computer access for students but the expensive maintenance of a wide variety of labs and constant maintenance is gone. These virtual environments also allow a student to make any changes to the system because once you finish it reverts back to the original configuration.  It is just not savings alone but also a far more flexible system that allows a student a lot more capabillity while sitting in a dorm room or on the road somewhere. As for bringing systems in, it has been happening for quite sometime. Hence this model also accomodates that.

Yes, and a GPU for rendering that would be state of the art, and always updated?

And how about massive multiplayer games where the ping from the server to the (virtual) desktop is near 0 ms?!

I remember first seeing those types of solutions in a Internet2 Meeting back in 2009. Anyone could get access to specific super-computer needs for a limited time, based on a reservation system.

Are they planning to leave computer labs empty, and make students bring their own PCs? How are the approaching this in order to increment cost-savings?

Quite a few developers work closely with universities and colleges, both in helping to shape the curriculum and on hiring interns who quite often become full-time employees or have business-related experience and references. Some vendors set-up labs using their equipment on campuses; this way, students have access to new technology and, as you say Nicole, they are best-prepared for life as a full-time employee in IT. 

That makes a lot of sense, @jaballo, in terms of the tremendous increase in productivity that end-users would see. Can you imagine having the power of a high-end server across all desktops? Awesome!