Distance learning has been a growing trend for years, but that trend was clearly accelerated by COVID-19. During the current pandemic, schools need to be able to ensure that students can work with any software, on any device. While some schools have 1:1 initiatives that provide each student with a device, in most cases students are currently working from their family’s personal devices at home. 
It’s more important than ever to ensure that students have access to all of the critical applications they need for their coursework, on any device, no matter where they are.
Enter Signpost. Signpost is essentially the Netflix for academic software, providing students and schools access to a library of over 900 software titles on a simple annual subscription basis. And when Signpost needed to enable distance learning by ensuring its 350,000 subscribers had access to all of those applications on any device – without the need to download and install software – they turned to Cameyo.
Which is why we’re excited to announce today that Signpost has partnered with Cameyo to enable the delivery of all of its educational software titles within their own instance of Microsoft Azure.
Signpost is an incredibly strategic partner, and their model is changing the game when it comes to access to expensive academic software. As a result, Signpost has been rapidly expanding throughout Europe, with over 350,000 education subscribers today and an expectation to grow to 1 million subscribers within 2 years. When it needed to make it’s software titles available from anywhere and on any device, Signpost realized it needed an alternative to the cost and complexity of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
“With the sudden shift to distance learning, we needed to ensure seamless access to all of our software titles so that our users wouldn’t miss a beat,” said Pieter Barremaecker, Co-Founder & CIO of Signpost. “The amount of servers that would be required to deliver this much software to this many students would be outrageously expensive with a legacy VDI solution.”
The Shift to Cloud-Native Digital Workspaces
“It’s Signpost’s role to help ensure that students can continue to be productive from anywhere, regardless of what device they have in front of them,” said Barremaecker. “But we also need to make it easy for schools to enable this, even in a mixed environment of devices, and to help them do so securely.”
Signpost’s partnership with Cameyo helps eliminate that complexity while providing a seamless user experience compared to the desktop version of the software titles delivered.
“Cameyo’s built-for-the-cloud approach to Digital Workspaces eliminates not only the upfront cost of servers and other infrastructure required by VDI, but it also removes all of the ongoing complexity and cost associated with VDI,” said Barremaecker. “And the fact that we can leverage the full power of the Cameyo platform from within our own instance of Microsoft Azure gives us the flexibility we need to continue our rapid expansion.”
Streamlining App Delivery for a Better User Experience
One of the key benefits that Signpost provides to customers is the ability to access hundreds of education software titles through a single subscription. With Cameyo, Signpost eliminates the need for students to download or install anything on their device. Students can simply access any application in the Signpost library with the click of a button, from any HTML5 web browser.
“Simplicity is key, and with Cameyo our subscribers get instant access to the software they need without ever having to worry about downloads, installations, or software versions,” said Barremaecker. “With Cameyo, our subscribers get to access the full desktop version of the software they’re used to, without that software needing to be installed. There’s absolutely nothing new for users to learn.”