SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise firm (NYSE: HPE), at the moment introduced that, within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Doane University in Crete, Nebraska, deployed an Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) community to carry distant and hybrid training to its 2,500 college students and equip its 500 school and workers with the instruments they should ship it. Utilizing Aruba wi-fi, switching, safety, and administration options, Doane rapidly deployed a dependable and safe community to handle scholar and school wants and to start planning for a post-pandemic studying setting.
Based in 1872, Doane is Nebraska’s oldest non-public faculty and is designated as a “High Nationwide Liberal Arts School” by U.S. Information and World Report. The College’s foremost campus is comprised of 21 buildings together with six residence halls that home 800 college students. Doane additionally operates two satellite tv for pc campuses positioned in Lincoln and Omaha.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it escalated Doane’s want for a dependable and safe community. College students have been having issues connecting to their programs from house or their dorms and have been being dropped from their Zoom periods. The IT group was confronted with both upgrading their present Cisco community or changing it with a extra progressive resolution that would help the College’s long-term imaginative and prescient in addition to its fast wants.
“My objective has all the time been to guarantee that the one factor that’s difficult for our college students is their coursework,” mentioned Doane College CIO, Derek Bierman. “It’s vital for us to assume strategically about all the know-how we’re utilizing to supply a unbelievable studying expertise for our college students and construct a community for the place the College needs to be, not the place we are actually.”
Whereas Doane’s IT group thought of utilizing Cisco for a refresh, the excessive price, coupled with the requirement for a future-ready resolution that helps their imaginative and prescient, drove them to search for alternate options. As well as, because the pandemic lingered, the uncertainty surrounding the proportion of time college students would spend in lecture rooms versus distant studying underscored the necessity for a basis that would higher handle a hybrid studying mannequin.
Working with companion DataVizion, Doane moved to an Aruba ESP community together with Aruba Wi-Fi 6 entry factors (APs), CX Sequence switches, with Aruba Central offering unified cloud-based administration. The primary section of the deployment throughout Doane’s residence halls was accomplished in lower than six weeks. Part two, which incorporates connecting the remainder of the buildings on campus and deploying ClearPass to unify wired and wi-fi NAC, is underway.
Unified Administration Saves Time, Simplifies Duties for IT
One of many main causes Doane selected Aruba ESP was its unified wired and wi-fi administration. Doane’s Director of IT, Ryan Dorshorst famous, “We wouldn’t wish to put all of our APs within the cloud and handle them with one system, then must troubleshoot our switches on one other platform. With the ability to handle the whole lot from a single pane of glass utilizing Aruba Central saves us useful time and assets.”
Dorshorst additionally discovered that Central permits the group to observe and handle the community from wherever with out a VPN connection. For instance, on the nights when college students are shifting into their residence halls, he can oversee the community remotely from his telephone. Central additionally allows him to run stories on particular visitors – similar to that emanating solely from scholar units – and supplies templates for straightforward configuration adjustments, leading to time and price financial savings for the IT group.
Dorshorst can be excited concerning the potential to make use of contextual knowledge from Central to determine at-risk college students in order that Doane can develop programming to help them and additional improve their instructional expertise. With among the proximity tracing capabilities inherent in Central, for instance, a professor might determine an absent scholar and examine in to verify the scholar is effectively, can get hold of notes and assignments from the missed class, and may keep on observe.
Scholar Units and IoT Can Join Securely and Reliably
One other key advantage of Doane’s Aruba ESP community is the power to reliably and securely join the wide range of units college students are bringing to campus together with Sonos audio system, Amazon Alexa units, gaming units and printers, and the same old laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Mentioned Dorshorst, “The Aruba community is delivering the reliability we lacked beforehand within the residence halls. I’m not getting complaints that college students are having hassle getting their cell units linked or dropping from Zoom calls anymore.”
As Doane enters its second semester, it is going to be conducting COVID-19 testing for college kids, permitting these with damaging outcomes to return to lecture rooms, however persevering with to allow others to be taught remotely. Dorshorst mentioned the community is vital to constructing this hybrid setting, giving college students a seamless expertise whether or not they’re again within the classroom or of their dorm.
As well as, Dorshorst says that Doane will add IoT units as the brand new community is absolutely applied. The College’s services division already has the whole HVAC system linked by way of the wired community, however Dorshorst famous that it is going to be simpler so as to add IoT units wirelessly shifting ahead, notably for the reason that Aruba APs have built-in Bluetooth and Zigbee to simplify IoT deployment and administration.
“We have already got an engineering professor including sensors for air high quality or water detection to scale back Doane’s insurance coverage prices, as one instance,” he mentioned. “However we envision many various sorts of wi-fi IoT units will now be capable to join simply and securely.”
Aruba ESP Lays the Basis for New Campus Experiences
Shifting ahead, Doane plans to handle extra areas of its campus and enhance scholar experiences all through the college with its Aruba ESP community. Dorshorst says the IT group is evaluating Aruba’s Consumer Expertise Perception (UXI) sensors to ship community insights that ease the troubleshooting and backbone of points earlier than they come up. Moreover, the IT group plans to broaden wi-fi protection to the College’s athletic services the place the legacy APs at the moment fail as soon as a sure variety of units are connected.
“We’re excited to deploy Aruba within the out of doors soccer stadium and indoor observe complicated, so we are able to lastly ship dependable and high-performing Wi-Fi. And we all know that we’ll be capable to take a look at extra superior capabilities sooner or later like ticket scanning on smartphones,” Dorshorst mentioned.
Added CIO Bierman, “Whereas we don’t know all the issues college students might carry onto campus sooner or later, with our Aruba ESP community, we really feel like we are able to deal with no matter comes our method. We’re future thinkers and Aruba mirrors that progressive philosophy.”
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise firm
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise firm, is the worldwide chief in safe, clever edge-to-cloud networking options that use AI to automate the community, whereas harnessing knowledge to drive highly effective enterprise outcomes. With Aruba ESP (Edge Companies Platform) and as-a-service choices, Aruba takes a cloud-native strategy to serving to clients meet their connectivity, safety, and monetary necessities throughout campus, department, knowledge heart, and distant employee environments, masking all facets of wired, wi-fi LAN, and large space networking (WAN).
To be taught extra, go to Aruba at www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time information updates, comply with Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the newest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba merchandise, go to the Airheads Group at community.arubanetworks.com.
