Read the Enterasys Case Study

C H ELMS FORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS
K-12 School District Seamlessly Supports BYOD, Cloud, and
Virtualization Initiatives with Enterasys Network Products
CASE STUD Y
Industry:
•K-12
District Stats:
• Networking IT Staff: 2
• Students/Faculty/Staff: 6,050
Located in Chelmsford, MA, the Chelmsford Public School District serves 6,050 students,
faculty and staff at one pre-school, four elementary schools, two middle schools, one high
school and the central offices for the school administration building.
To aid in the their mission of cultivating inspired, creative and well-rounded lifelong learners,
Chelmsford Public Schools upgraded their network to provide a 21st century learning
environment with BYOD, cloud and virtualization initiatives. The Enterasys solution has made
it possible for a network staff of two to easily manage the network and the additional 1,000
personal devices that have been brought to school and provide access to cloud-based services
from home for 800 staff members.
• Locations: 9
Challenges:
• Upgrade network to support BYOD,
cloud and virtualization initiatives
• Provide reliable, easy-to-manage wired
and wireless coverage
• Support technology initiatives (PARCC
and UDL)
Business Challenge
Products Utilized:
Chelmsford Public Schools sought to replace their slow, aging Cisco network and bring their school
district into the 21st Century. In order to support BYOD, cloud, virtualization and digital curriculum
initiatives, the school district required a network upgrade to deliver the robust wired and wireless
coverage which they required.
• S-Series modular switches
Security, reliability and ease-of-management would be critical as they prepared to allow students
to bring their own devices to school and enable the staff to access applications and documents
from home via the cloud while continuing to provide network access without incident for their large
population. The network would also be crucial for implementing the Universal Design for Learning
(UDL) which would outfit older classrooms with 21st Century technology such as iPads, Apple TVs,
interactive white boards and document cameras, to name a few.
In addition, the new network would be critical in preparing for future technology requirements such
as the Common Core online standardized assessment, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness
for College and Careers (PARCC), which would require Chelmsford Public Schools to increase the
number of computers and iPads on the network and provide the density to enable the possibility of
every student in grades 3-11 to take the online test at the same time.
Enterasys Solution
Chelmsford Public Schools had old and aging Cisco equipment that was not providing good
management of the network. They selected Enterasys, along with Rutter Networking to help with
the network integration, for a proven wired and wireless solution that could interoperate with their
multi-vendor network that includes a Checkpoint firewall and servers from EMC, HP and Dell, and
take them well into the 21st Century.
• B- & G-Series switches
• OneFabric Control Center
• NetSight network management
• Mobile IAM
• IdentiFi Wireless Access Points
and Controllers
Results:
• Stable, secure BYOD network
• Bullet-proof wireless network
• Centralized network Management
The new Enterasys OneFabric architecture allows Chelmsford’s two-person IT staff to simply manage and secure the network across all nine locations no
matter what devices students or staff use. NetSight has been a big help in reducing the network management complexity by bringing the entire network
into one, unified view. Enterasys IdentiFi Wireless provides reliable Wi-Fi access so students and faculty have fast network access no matter where they
are. The Enterasys S-Series switches have allowed them to increase the bandwidth at their biggest schools, the high school and middle school, and also
to handle the traffic of the town/school shared virtual environment, which includes a virtualized media server with over 400 educational videos streamed
to various classrooms.
According to Anne-Marie Fiore, Executive Director of Technology and Information Services, “The wireless is really bullet proof. To have 1,600 students
coming to high school and connecting to the network with their own personal devices and to have never intervened once with a technical support issue
is significant.” In addition, the staff has embraced the new wireless network and has enabled the Chelmsford High School business department to move
to an entirely digital curriculum using a combination of iPads and BYOD – paving the way for the middle schools to follow suit this fall.
The new Enterasys core switch has allowed them to increase from 1 Gig to 10 Gig in some locations, which in addition to increasing the speed of the
network, has allowed them to easily increase the amount of computers and iPads on the network, as they prepare to allow 3,600 students to take an
online test simultaneously as part of their PARCC readiness initiative.
Results
The Enterasys solution has enabled Chelmsford Public Schools to provide reliable wireless coverage for 5,250 students across nine locations and
seamlessly support BYOD, cloud and virtualization initiatives while increasing the productivity of a two-person IT team by providing:
1. Stable, secure BYOD network: Chelmsford has found their BYOD environment to be “very easy to manage” and the IT team has been able to
seamlessly support 47 applications running across the district and 33 different apps running on iPads with “no complaints”. Network access is
sanctioned and the network is secured as students access the Internet while IT ensures that the network is protected from any potential damage.
2. “Bullet-proof” wireless network: Since deploying their Wi-Fi network in 2012 they have had “no wireless issues whatsoever” from the 1,600
connected students, according to Fiore. In addition they are able to provide teachers access to cloud-based services from home, support their
virtualized server environment, outfit older classrooms with new network-supported technology and add hundreds of computers and 14 iPad labs
across their locations.
3. Centralized management: The OneFabric architecture has brought the entire network into one, unified view for ultimate ease of management.
“Having a reliable infrastructure makes everything else we do and deploy a lot easier,” says Bill O’Rourke, Network Manager. NetSight has been a
big help by allowing them to see if a particular building or part of the network is down. With less time being spent managing the network, the small
IT team has been able to increase their productivity significantly.
Even though Chelmsford Public Schools does not have the opportunity to work directly with the Enterasys support staff because they work through
their integration partner, Rutter, Fiore says, “I love when we have the Enterasys people involved in collaboration with our network integrator.” She
remembers a specific Enterasys support representative by name and says, “He was completely awesome. In response to my concern that the wireless
was not as robust as it could be, he came out and reviewed the map of the wireless APs and adjusted the numbers. As a result the solution has been
totally successful.”
Thanks to their Enterasys solution, Chelmsford Public Schools is confident that they can handle their current and future technology-dependent educational
needs including having all classrooms up-to-date with new technology devices by 2020 as part of UDL, being prepared for PARCC, looking at incorporating
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and moving toward digital textbooks.
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