VMware IT Academy

In the Spring of 2020 VMware IT Academy will be migrating to D2L, a new Learning Management System (LMS). We will be migrating from Kivuto Solutions to D2L Brightspace. D2L is an industry leader and their LMS platform Brightspace is the ideal solution for our learning community.

This migration will affect VMUG license program members, the VMware IT Academy members, and the VMware Academic Software License members.

In this thread we will be engaging with the members of these programs on the various questions, comments or remarks that they might have.

Ask away!

Will there be a price increase from one solution (Kivuto) to the other (D2L Brightspace?

Yes, there will be a price change:

• The academic institution subscription fee will be 325 USD for up to 200 users.
• For institutions with student numbers between 200 and 400 the amount will be 575 USD.
• Institutions with 400+ students will receive a subscription fee based on their student #.

Update on the pricing that our resource portal provider D2L will charge to cover their costs:

- block of 200 user tokens: 330 USD

- block of 400 user tokens: 505 USD

If the payment is done through a purchase order there will be an additional 50 USD handling fee.

Our current VMware IT Academy subscription is paid up until July 2022.

How will this be affected?

Hello! You will have Kivuto Support until the last day of your subscription with Kivuto, you won't be affected, your time will be respected.

After your subscription ends in 2022 you will be asked to change to the new solution

Hope I was clear enough!

Do you have any more questions?

That's what I was hoping to hear. :smileygrin:

I appreciate this move. It is almost August now and I haven't seen any updates on the D2L transition in a while. How is it going? It would be great if it were running two weeks before the school year started.

Hi!

From a D2L perspective the platform is ready to be launched, we have experienced unexpected delays due to the current situation in the world, but this has given us more time to tune up the platform even more, adding more value for institutions as soon as they are able to migrate

We will have an update quite soon, thank you!

When can we get access to D2L? Do we have to wait until our Kivuto runs out? 

Once we go live with the D2L platform existing IT Academy institutions can obtain access to D2L prior to their existing portal portal running out, though there will be a new subscription fee to be paid towards D2L, and there won't be a refund from Kivuto.

So our recommendation is to remain with Kivuto until portal expiration and then sign up for D2L unless the D2L LMS functionality is required.

For those institutions that have portals that are about to expire, the D2L launch date is at least 5 weeks out, so until then please plan to renew your subscription with Kivuto for another year.

We thank you for your patience with us while we are working to get this right.

Best regards,

Vincent

We have an existing active subscription at Kivuto at our university and we know that you will be migrating from Kivuto Solutions to D2L Brightspace. Our subscription will expire next month. Would it be possible to renew it for 3 more years in D2L? How can we do it? How will we do user validation?

Hello ,

Many thanks for being part of our academic program, joining our community page and sharing your questions with us.

1. Our subscription will expire next month. Would it be possible to renew it for 3 more years in D2L?

A: We haven't gone live with our D2L platform yet. I also anticipate that our launch will be later than the expiration date you mentioned. As such I would recommend you renew for one more year at Kivuto.

2. How will we do user validation?

A: I think you are asking about how you can add users to the D2L platform? If this is the case, we will have materials available that explain how to import student batches in the D2L platform and assign them to the program resources. If this was not what you wanted to learn, could you please expand your question a bit?

Hoping this helped,

Best regards,

Vincent

Is D2L live yet? If not, do you have a 'guestimate'?

Hello Randy,

Thank you for sharing your question.

Considering the progress we are making, we anticipate to launch D2L near the end of April '21.

While this is our expectation, we can't guarantee it just yet.

Hope this helps,

Vincent

Latest estimate on D2L going live?

Hello Randy,

We have altered our D2L launch estimate to the end of May time-frame.

Thank you for your patience with us.

Vincent

Hi,

Our VMware Academic Program subscription is set to expire on 2021-04-24. What should I do? I do not want to pay a one year subscription fee to Kivuto and a month later pay a new subscription fee to D2L. Will Kivuto and D2L offer the same software from VMware one year from now?

Hello rs748020,

Many thanks for your question.

Our recommendation is to renew your academic portal one more year with Kivuto, for the following reasons:

1. We won't launch with D2L till late May timeframe, so after your portal expiration.

2. Once we do launch our platform at D2L, ONLY the portals that expire from that time on will be migrating from Kivuto to D2L.

3. So if you renew with Kivuto for another year now, your migration from Kivuto to D2L will be on 2022-04-24.

4. The resources available on the Kivuto portal will be also available on the D2L portal, obviously the portal functionality will be different.

5. We will update both portals with the same resources moving forward, so that during the transition from Kivuto to D2L all institutions have access to the same resources no matter the portal they have a subscription for at that time.

Hoping this helps you to make your decision on how to move forward in our academic programs,

Please let me know if I can help in any other way,

Vincent

We let our Kivuto expire on 04/2020 and will re-do for D2L when it becomes available. Will this cause a problem?

Hello RandyGShelton,

That won't cause a problem, you can just reapply for your institution when we go live with the D2L portal.

To bridge the gap you might want to consider the following readily available resources for your students:

1. The default 60-day evaluation licenses by VMware: https://www.vmware.com/try-vmware.html

2. Our free open course content (top line of the eLearning tab in our Kivuto Demo store): https://vmwaredemo.onthehub.com/WebStore/ProductsByMajorVersionList.aspx?cmi_mnuMain_child_child=9a1f6afe-ad1a-e511-940d-b8ca3a5db7a1&cmi_mnuMain_child=aafc5891-884f-e511-940f-b8ca3a5db7a1

This includes:

- Getting Started in IT

- KubeAcademy

- Cloud and Virtualization Concepts

- Software Defined Storage Concepts

- Network Virtualization Concepts

As soon as we go live with our new portal we'll announce it here.

Hoping this helps,

Vincent

Im confused.  We didn't know this transition was happening until a student tried to do a certification exam and they found out they werent allowed to do it with the Kivuto transition. 

1. Is there some documentation around what the new system will do and work ? 

2. How does the licensing work for our student practice machines (eg vsphere licensing etc..) 

3. How do we handle students who want to do the certification exam between now and when we transition ot D2L? 

How much more is this compared to the old license/kivuto system ? 

Hello UniSAStew,

Thank you for your participation in our academic programs and for raising the question.

I would offer the following resources to help you find the answers to your questions:

- ​YouTube video’s that demo different aspects.

- ​Register for one of our D2L webinars where we explain and demo the D2L portal functionality.

- ​Join our regular open meeting slots to ask your questions live and receive support.

Regarding your questions:

1. You may find the information in the youtube video's highlighted above, and through https://itacademy.vmware.com

2. The resources D2L provides access to are the same as Kivuto gives/gave access to. Instructors may use the academic evaluation licenses to deploy the software on the lab PC's (at Kivuto this was called lab installs), students may get their individual academic evaluation license to deploy on their own laptop/pc.

3. If you still have access to your Kivuto portal, your teachers can still order certification vouchers for the students so that they can take the certification exams. If your Kivuto portal expired, you can sign up for the D2L portal, obtain a student seat subscription package, create the class, add students to them and order them the certification voucher. With that voucher the students can take the academic exam.

4. While Kivuto was charging 250USD per department, D2L charges in student subscription seat bundles:

- 205 seats at 330USD*

- 405 seats at 505USD*

* subject to change at any time

Once more I would recommend you register for one of the D2L webinars we regularly deliver to learn about the details of the migration.

Hope this helps to find your way,

Vincent

Thanks for the quick reply.  Ill check the resources out. 

Perhaps it was just me but the Kivoto SSO model worked for us registering students peace meal is a real pain and manual uploads were not timely enough and are time consuming.

Happy to work with an API or SSO integration of some kind if available but I understand this is a long way out, any chance others are or will suffer from the same issue and want to nudge D2L to put some effort into something other than a text file?

Apologies for being a bit late to this topic, but it still seems relevant.

In the education industry, does anyone know how D2L/Brightspace handles what Kivuto used to call "Lab Installs?" For example, are the license keys for on-campus VMWare installations somehow taken out of the pool of user keys purchased, or are they still separate?

Thanks in advance.