HP Procurve Networking - Customer stories

	Oaklands Catholic School
	“We are delighted with the performance of our ProCurve wireless network. Staff now have the freedom to access files and the internet wherever they are on campus. The new network is secure and reliable and meets our budget. It also comes with a free product lifetime warranty, which gives us peace of mind in the unlikely event of failure.” Maggie Child Deputy head teacher Oaklands School United Kingdom

Oaklands is a highly successful 11 to 18 years old, mixed, Catholic, voluntary-aided school in Hampshire, UK, with 1,270 pupils and 85 staff.

As a forward-thinking establishment and in line with Government directives to encourage the use of information technology and promote broadband level services in every secondary school, Oaklands constantly re-evaluates and improves its Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Its existing wired network was a series of vulnerable daisy-chained switches with limited bandwidth shared between too many users. At peak times of the day the network was slow and unreliable, and access to the school’s information management system network was limited depending on your location on campus.

These problems had become a regular occurrence, and both staff and students alike often become frustrated at the low level of reliability. Oaklands staff in particular, wanted the freedom to access the Internet and the school’s central management system from their laptops in any building on the campus at any time. With their current network, they were unable to do this.

Increased power and reliability
Oaklands approached leading ProCurve reseller, European Electronique, to help solve their limited bandwidth and flexibility problems. It sought a reliable network that had enough power to ensure that its current pain points were overcome and a system that would enable staff to achieve their objective of accessing email and shared files on the internal network from wherever they were located in the building, without wires.

As a specialist in the education market, European Electronique had no hesitation to recommend a ProCurve Networking wireless solution based on its industry leading reputation for quality, scalable products and a proven track record in the education sector.

“To Oaklands, and indeed any school considering a new network, the most important factors are the manageability and reliability of the system. That is why we recommended ProCurve,” says Tim Killick, education account manager at European Electronique. “ProCurve has a strong reputation in the industry for reliability and offers quality, cost effective solutions.

“ProCurve products carry a lifetime, next business day warranty, complementary software and firmware updates, and free telephone and email support, so service costs and maintenance are kept to a minimum, for as long as you own the product, and that is very important for a school.”

Central management
Engineered for reliability and robust security, the turnkey ProCurve wireless solution installed at Oaklands is designed around the intelligent ProCurve 5308xl switch and provides 1Gbit fibre optic connections to each cabinet location. These cabinets offer 100Mbit connectivity to each user or wireless access point with either existing ProCurve 2524 switches or 2600 Series switches, using Power over Ethernet (PoE) where required.

Another fundamental need for Oaklands was the manageability of its new solution. Its previous network was task heavy and could not be managed from a central location. To configure the network, staff literally had to go to every access point and reconfigure them. With the new ProCurve solution, central network management is achieved through the ProCurve Wireless EDGE Services xl Module (WESM) as Killick explains:

“The centrally managed nature of Oaklands’ wireless solution was an important factor in making the decision to go with ProCurve. In the old days when you had fat access points, if you wanted to configure your network you had to go round to every wireless access point to do this. Now, we have thin access points, that are simple, and easy to manage, and are all controlled from the centre of the network through the ProCurve Wireless EDGE Services xl Module.”

The ProCurve Wireless EDGE Services xl Module, which resides in the core 5300xl switch, centrally controls the wireless radio ports distributed around the campus.

Constant access
With its new ProCurve solution in place, Oaklands has an intelligent and flexible wireless network that is easy to manage through a centralised system that staff have complete confidence in.

With the old network, staff at Oaklands had little confidence in network availability. The new ProCurve solution has completely restored their confidence, and the staff have wireless access to the internet, intranet and the schools information system – a working benefit for staff as Maggie Child, deputy head teacher at Oaklands explains:

“We were looking for reliability, and a job well done, and that is what we got with this ProCurve wireless network. All our staff now have wireless enabled laptops and no matter where they are, they can access the Internet and the school’s information management system, including their own work areas, meaning that staff productivity levels are kept to a maximum at all times - they think it’s fantastic!

“Our next move will be to input registration, class attendance and pupil assessment data straight into our central systems from the laptops. In the future, thanks to ProCurve’s inherent security, we will look at the possibility of providing access for the sixth form and then all students.”

Killick adds: “Oaklands School now has a faster network with a cleaner design, and thanks to the inherent reliability of ProCurve, it is built on a more resilient and efficient architecture.”