Cape Town, 30 Sep 2016
Founded in 1888, St Mary's is the oldest school in Johannesburg. It is steeped in a strong ethos of providing an extremely high level of education to students from grade 0 to grade 12 by encouraging individuality, friendliness and confidence. The school has long embraced a key role in shaping generations of young women by providing dynamic and relevant education for each girl.
With a vision to encourage innovations and creativity in teaching and learning across their campuses, St Mary's has fully embraced the information age. With whiteboards and data projectors in each classroom, a resource centre with 30 computers, and multiple classes with computer banks, St Mary's is able to offer both its staff and students the very best platform on which to teach and learn.
When St Mary's decided to introduce a bring your own device (BYOD) environment, which would include school-issued iPads for students, it was imperative that the school partner with experts in the field for scoping, installation, on-site support (as well as remote) for the whole network.
Certain key criteria that needed to be met for the school included:
* Allowing teachers/students to present in class over WiFi;
* Accommodating a high volume of BYOx;
* Reducing the need for physical cabling;
* Working with partners that can support the entire network;
* Having a partner(s) with referenceable experience in the education sector;
* Allowance for granular user visibility;
* Allowance for advanced device and user management; and
* Having the ability to authenticate and monitor users, regardless of their device.
"Providing that many students with the ability to roam the Internet can sometimes be dangerous and daunting. We needed a solution that would ensure we were in control at all times," said John Berning, IT manager at St Mary's.
Having worked extensively with the St Mary's environment as its on-site IT partner, Gentron understood the necessary requirements and criteria for a successful, seamless roll-out for a project of this size. The task was then to find an appropriate specialist WiFi company that could work with Gentron for the St Mary's BYOD venture. With Gentron's on-site expertise and years of experience, it was able to partner with Khipu Networks as the 'wireless expert', and fulfil all the requirements of the St Mary's BYOD project.
"Once we met with Khipu, we were extremely confident that, with our onsite experience and Khipu's advanced wireless networking skill-set, we would be able to provide St Mary's with an A-to-Z solution," said Ernest Skinner, Director at Gentron.
The single team from Gentron and Khipu Networks immediately began scoping and planning the project - ensuring the school was kept in the loop with every step.
"The input from both Khipu and Gentron was fantastic. I was able to ask the questions I wanted to ask, and get the information I needed whenever I needed it," said John Berning, IT Manager at St Mary's.
With a campus the size of St Mary's, it was important to both Gentron and Khipu Networks that the technical specifications were all correct - down to every nuance. The first step was deciding on an Aruba Networks controller-based WiFi solution to enable high levels of throughput and complete coverage across the entire campus.
To ensure a safe, user-friendly BYOD environment, Khipu deployed Aruba's ClearPass Policy Management solution to regulate, monitor and on-board devices (both school-issued and personal). Using the solution, the school would be able to provide appropriate access to the network based on each individual user, rather than the device. With this user information, the school would be able to monitor, restrict, or allow access to various content.
"One of the problems the school faced was not knowing how to manage and control devices that were traversing the network. With ClearPass, the school has complete control and visibility of the devices and users on the WiFi network," said Gareth Trollip, Technical Manager, Khipu Networks.
The final hurdle that needed to be cleared was the need to monitor how the WiFi network was functioning, and overall visibility of the users/devices. For that, the team deployed a network-monitoring tool that provides complete visibility of the network, both wired and wireless. Monitoring from a central management point would allow the school to have access to useful information, including bandwidth usage, WiFi coverage, and the overall health of the WiFi environment. This was a key requirement for the school as they needed to provide safety and credibility for a service that was now available.
Relying on excellent communication and project management skills, the Gentron and Khipu teams were able to roll-out the project in the allocated time-frame with very little down-time for the school. The project is one that Khipu Networks, Gentron and St Mary's are extremely proud of, and it has become a flagship project for everyone involved.
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