I can't seem to find an answer to this myself and have come across several barriers to trying to even get started on it.
The background is:
- I manage the systems and technologies used by 60 schools across 4 countries
- The number of unique classes we offer is roughly 1,000 per country, so the content includes 1,000 .PPT, .PDF, .DOC, .MP3, .SWF and/or .MP4 files (many classes contain extra reading material, movies and audio examples)
- We set the content schedule (which classes to teach each week) centrally, then each school schedules them according to the needs of their students. Right now each school uses Windows 7 and they must get the classes via FTP each week.
- Right now the files are password protected by their author, which, given human memories and company churn rates, is creating a lot of double work.
For this many files, to this many schools, this doesn't really work.
What I imagine is a scheduled/automated DFS system that lets us push the content to each school 3 weeks at a time (meaning teachers can teach this week and prepare 2 weeks in advance). At the same time, I'd like to include some network or file security that ensures the materials remain read-only and can't be copied off the network.
I have no idea how to get started on this, or if it's even possible. I don't even know what I should be considering, besides the obvious. I really welcome the advice and questions of anyone familiar with sort of thing!