Ceibal streamlines delivery, puts 240,000 Windows devices into Uruguay's students', and teachers' hands

Digital inclusion begins with access. Students and teachers need affordable and reliable devices and connectivity in order to improve learning and foster innovation and community. Ceibal was founded to universalize access to digital technology in the Uruguayan public education system. Beginning with the delivery of laptops and tablets to teachers and students, Ceibal evolved into a diverse universe of platforms, programs, tools, and resources. The organization accomplishes its mission with a fully cloud-based infrastructure and runs with an IT team of 60, which is relatively small considering that Ceibal is the largest education Microsoft tenant in Latin America.

Students and teachers from all over the country have become active participants in Ceibal programs, allowing them to expand the limits of the classroom, propose innovative solutions, and provide more and better opportunities for the entire educational community.

Because Ceibal delivers devices directly to the students’ homes, the agency wanted to streamline the process of provisioning and distributing devices. This need became even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, as students and teachers worked exclusively from home. Connectivity and working devices were key to ensuring the continuity of Ceibal’s programs and optimizing their reach.

By then, fortunately, Ceibal had already begun implementing Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopilot to automate the provisioning, distribution, and management of Windows 10/11 devices. Microsoft Intune empowers IT to manage, assess, and protect apps and devices, while Windows Autopilot automates provisioning and deployment. 

“The decision to use Intune came in 2019 before we knew the world would be in a lockdown”, says Juan Pablo Suárez, Ceibal’s Head of Product. “We carefully evaluated several proposals and chose Microsoft Intune primarily because Windows is the standard operating system worldwide and solves many compatibility issues with peripherals that devices with other operating systems did not have at the time of making the decision,” says Suárez.

Ceibal had established a practice of trading in devices every year, and the agency began replacing Ubuntu devices with dual-boot devices in 2020, giving the student the option to boot into Windows 10 or Ubuntu. “For the first two years, we gave users the option of logging into either operating system in order to ease adoption," says Mateo Pérez, Product Coordinator at Ceibal. “By 2022, users had successfully adopted Windows 10, so we began providing only single-boot devices. This allowed for more storage space, which ultimately led to better device performance. And by 2023, we adopted Windows 11 as the main operating system.” says Pérez. 

Eventually, says Pérez, Ceibal will be running Windows devices exclusively. In the last six months of 2022—with Windows 11, Intune, and Autopilot in place—that migration accelerated quickly. By the end of 2023, the number of active Windows 11 devices in the hands of students and teachers across Uruguay reached more than 240,000. 

“If we hadn’t automated our delivery and provisioning processes through Windows Autopilot, which guides users into the Ceibal environment,” Perez explains, “we could not have delivered a personalized offer of apps, programs, and configurations.”

In addition to putting massive numbers of devices into the hands of students and teachers across Uruguay, usage per device is also rising, which indicates growing engagement. Ceibal provides different types of educational programs that students can use or take part in using their devices. The main example is its LMS (Schoology) CREA, a platform to manage the learning experience of students. In 2019, CREA had a 55% usage rate; now, it is 86%. 

Pérez says the switch to Windows has delivered other benefits as well. “Prior to implementing the Microsoft solution, maintenance and update costs were higher because each device model had its own OS version,” says Pérez. “Additionally, compatibility between software and hardware made things even more difficult. By integrating the Microsoft solution, everything became much quicker and simpler.”

Ceibal’s adoption of Windows 11 has also improved the experience of its users, according to Victoria Licio, Communications and Brand Coordinator at Ceibal. “By migrating to Microsoft, we were also able to expand use of our communication channels, providing a more direct line of communication between teachers and students, allowing for an open exchange of proposals and programs, segmented and customized,” Licio explains.

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