HP ProCurve Networking - Témoignages clients

	HP ProCurve Networking: University of Cambridge partners with HP ProCurve Networking to enable massive IP telephony deployment
	“Our HP ProCurve Adaptive Network solution with its comprehensive Lifetime Warranty♦ is playing a vital role in one of the largest educational sector VoIP deployments of its kind. The HP ProCurve solution has performed extremely well and has resulted in significant savings to those institutions which have adopted it.” Bob Franklin, data services project manager, University Computing Service, University of Cambridge, UK

Objective:
University of Cambridge wanted to introduce open-standards switching technology to the Local Area Network (LAN) infrastructures within its departments and colleges so that it could replace its ageing telephone system with an Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solution.

Approach:

• Advertised a framework contract via the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) resulting in responses from five major networking vendors.
• Chose HP ProCurve, which was represented by Getech Limited, an HP ProCurve Select Partner.

IT Improvements:

• More reliable, highly available, scalable LAN infrastructures which support the deployment of IP telephony.
• Open-standards technology allows the efficient handling and convergence of modern applications.
• IP telephony services, available to the departments and colleges, improve reliability and clarity.

Business outcomes:

• Open-standards technology ensures easy future network expansion, customer choice and scalability for future business growth.
• Enhanced network reliability and performance leads to improved service levels and high availability safeguards the university’s business.
• IP telephony offers institutions improved communication services and lowers costs.
• Ease of configuration and installation saves the university time and money.

“The HP ProCurve solution is ideally suited to our LANs. Its price/performance ratio is very attractive, it is easy to install and quick to configure. Moreover, HP ProCurve’s comprehensive Lifetime Warranty will drive down TCO. We did not hesitate to recommend HP ProCurve switches to our institutions.” Bob Franklin, data services project manager, University Computing Service, University of Cambridge, UK

Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and, academically, consistently ranks in the world’s top five universities. Affiliates have won 82 Nobel Prizes and, historically, it has produced a significant proportion of Britain’s prominent scientists, writers and politicians. Natural sciences, biomedicine, arts and humanities, social sciences and technology are its major strengths. Cambridge is a collegiate university with its main functions divided between central departments and 31 independent colleges. Over 18,000 students are currently enrolled at the university.

Colleges and departments at the University of Cambridge manage their own budgets and consequently, different solutions have evolved to satisfy their individual IT department requirements. For example, hardware supplied by multiple network vendors has created disparate Local Area Network (LAN) infrastructures. The University Computing Service department provides advice, guidance and technical expertise to support all colleges and departments.

“Clearly, telecommunications plays a vital role throughout the university. Unfortunately, our analogue telephone system will shortly become unsupportable,” explains Bob Franklin, data services project manager, University Computing Service, University of Cambridge. “We needed a system that employs modern technologies.”

Unified communications
The University Computing Service decided to unify communications by rolling out a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution based on Cisco technologies and supported by PTS Consulting. However, to implement this solution successfully, the University Computing Service had to identify suitable network switches to the departments and colleges so that a reliable and standardised LAN could be implemented to support this ambitious VoIP solution.

“Although all points-of-presence are Cisco switches, we wanted to provide a range of good value switches as part of a framework agreement for the University’s Departments and Colleges to ease the cost and decision making burden from their transition,” continues Franklin. “The existing LAN infrastructures also had to support features such as Quality of Service (QoS), Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Discovery (LLDP-MED) and Power over Ethernet (PoE).

“Our vendor of choice had to offer excellent performance, represent a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and offer a solution that was easy to configure and install. Switch size is also important due to the limited space available in some of our older buildings.”

The University Computing Service despatched a framework contract to a number of major networking vendors. Three vendors were shortlisted, including HP ProCurve, which was represented by Getech Limited, an HP ProCurve Networking Select Partner.

“The HP ProCurve solution is ideally suited to our LANs,” declares Franklin. “Their price/performance ratio is very attractive, they are easy to install and quick to configure. Moreover, HP ProCurve’s comprehensive Lifetime Warranty will drive down TCO. We did not hesitate to recommend HP ProCurve switches to our institutions.”

Open-standards
HP ProCurve offers a comprehensive range of reliable and scalable adaptive network solutions to help higher educational establishments such as the University of Cambridge to evolve in response to changing technologies and business needs. HP ProCurve open-standards technology is futureproof, less complex and more adaptive to users and their applications. HP ProCurve also offers an excellent price/performance ratio and furthermore its technology is easy to install and configure.

The university’s vast VoIP project involves deploying a total of 17,000 Cisco IP telephony handsets and HP ProCurve technology has already been implemented in the departments of Chemistry, Criminology and Mathematics, as well as within Selwyn, Homerton and Peterhouse Colleges where staff and students are now benefitting from improved reliability and clarity.

As an example of how HP ProCurve is being deployed, the four-storey Law Faculty has implemented a HP ProCurve solution based on highly reliable, award-winning HP ProCurve 5400zl series switches and 2900 series switch technology, with HP ProCurve 3500yl series switches providing PoE to three floors. The new infrastructure provides law students with greatly improved network performance enabling faster email and on-line search facilities as well as 110 IP phones to enhance communications.

The LLDP-MED standard protocol, supported within the HP ProCurve switches allows the university to deploy and manage VoIP endpoints with ease. This technology aids auto-discovery of QoS LAN policies, device location, automated power management of PoE endpoints and inventory management. Therefore administrators can readily track the university’s VoIP devices, leading to “plug and play” VoIP networking.

Improved communications
The University of Cambridge is steadily upgrading the LAN infrastructures of its departments and colleges with many selecting HP ProCurve switches, which can be quickly configured and installed saving time and money. Open-standards technology ensures customer choice and scalability for future growth whilst high availability protects the university’s business. A significant number of students and staff already benefit from improved communications offered at a lower cost by IP telephony. The highly reliable HP ProCurve Adaptive Network solution with its comprehensive lifetime warranty, also safeguards service availability and lowers TCO.

“Our HP ProCurve Adaptive Network solution with its comprehensive Lifetime Warranty is playing a vital role in one of the largest educational sector VoIP deployments of its kind. The availability of the low-cost, high-performance HP ProCurve solutions for our 200 Institutions will allow greater flexibility in terms of each Institution’s choice in technologies to support our VoIP rollout. The HP ProCurve solution has performed extremely well and has resulted in significant savings to those Institutions which have adopted it.

“By successfully combining HP ProCurve’s openstandards technology and Cisco’s IP handsets, we are creating a modern system that will satisfy all our communications needs,” concludes Franklin.