 When it comes to education, technology is king. Technology is becoming increasingly important to a whole variety of things that we're doing and will only be so more going forward. But having said that, technology infrastructure issues are getting to be much more complicated and much more challenging. For the Family Academy in Brooklyn, there's barely enough budget to pay a part-time IT staffer to keep a few dozen 10-year-old machines running smoothly. As we all know, budget is a big issue. And one of the things that we were not able to do was to provide our students with new, updated computer equipment. Many schools have computers nowadays, but they suffer from being, in many cases, pretty old. Many of our students had to share computers because we couldn't keep enough computers working at any given time. Enter Neverware, a New York startup that's using age-old techniques from the mainframe computing era to transform barely-functioning machines into top-of-the-line supercomputers for a fraction of the standard cost. Neverware uses a set of technologies known as desktop virtualization. So with Neverware technology, what we're able to do is we're able to push more power and performance to the end computer without having to throw out an entire otherwise entirely good system. A single powerful server called the Juicebox becomes the brains for the entire system. The outdated machines become the clients, essentially dumb screens, with up to 150 computers powered by a single Juicebox. Computers no longer need to be individually maintained. Now you have a single master image, you have an intelligence server that can do things like automatically address viruses, and all the school needs to do is maintain that master image and they no longer have to run around playing whack-a-mole with all the computers that they currently have. In theory, a 10-year-old machine could run like a supercomputer, and the cost of maintenance is centered around a single set of servers instead of dozens of different workstations all around the school. Many of the computers we're using here are about 10 years old, and we are now able to make them run like brand new Windows 7 computers. Students definitely notice the difference. The students and I both commented, isn't this wonderful? Every single machine in this room is working. Before the upgrade, we had like these little netbooks, and they worked like really, really slow or sometimes they just crashed on you while you're working, and if you don't have your stuff saved, that was just terrible. But after we got this one, they were much faster. Students appreciated it, and I appreciated it very much. Right now, Neverware's major competitors are big corporations like Citrix and VMware. The downside to big corporations like that is that they don't provide their own hardware, which adds another factor to the mess for schools who are looking to cut back on costs. In our reporting, the costs with Neverware's approach were substantially lower, up to five times less expensive. With that being said, Neverware is facing an uphill battle. It's pitching to a group of clients mired in bureaucracy with long and complex buying cycles. It's also a small, scrappy startup with a six-man team, meaning it can't possibly offer the same level of customer support as a giant like Citrix or VMware. If Neverware can succeed, the benefits are clear. Schools would spend less money replacing and servicing old computers, meaning they'd have more on hand to bring new technology into the classroom. When I come in there and I say, hey, we've got this box that we'll plug into your school to make all your old computers go really fast, their first response is, I don't believe you. As soon as we actually demonstrate for them, a lot of the common wisdom about how schools pay for things and budget cycles just begin to fall away. So far, Neverware has had dramatic success with its pilot program at a school in Brooklyn. If the startup can do the same at the citywide level, it may be the beginning of a transformation for technology infrastructure in schools across the nation. When it comes to college applications, yeah, a lot more of that, a lot more of the work happens online. It's very convenient, but it's only convenient if you have a reliable computer to use. And so that's a deal maker for our students. It really, really is. It's a deal maker. It's a deal maker.