Case Study: Westminster College
THE CHALLENGE
As Chief Information Officer for Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Scott Lowe is responsible for making sure that the campus computing environment – which includes data, applications, voice and audio/visual – remains available to support the academic mission of the College.
However, with an aging, crumbling network infrastructure, the school was struggling to keep up with the demands of students, faculty and staff, who wanted increased reliability and capability to make their jobs easier. Furthermore, students were clamoring for a wireless infrastructure and Westminster was woefully behind its peer institutions in this regard.
“We had frequent problems with our network,” says Lowe, “and, worst of all, had no financial means to replace the old Cisco equipment, let alone think about adding wireless capability. Between overpriced hardware and expensive SmartNet, replacing the network infrastructure with new Cisco equipment would have meant siphoning off dollars more appropriately put to use educating our students. We had quite a dilemma on our hands.”
That is, until Lowe and Westminster College were introduced to Professional Network Solutions and ProCurve Networking by Hewlett Packard.
THE SOLUTION
“In 2006,” says Lowe, “Bill Ryan from Professional Network Solutions stopped by our office to introduce himself and PNS, and to talk with us about HP ProCurve networking equipment.”
Ryan discussed with Lowe cost of acquisition and ownership of HP ProCurve equipment, while explaining ProCurve’s lifetime warranty, which is included in the initial low purchase price of the equipment. ProCurve’s reliability and place in the market also made the solution extremely compelling, according to Lowe.
“So we made the decision to remove just about all of our Cisco equipment from campus and replace it with HP ProCurve equipment – even the network core. HP’s 5412 switch was a perfect replacement for our previous switch, and we also rolled out about 100 of HP’s “light” wireless access points, all connected to three controllers in our network core.”
Today, Professional Network Solutions provides Westminster College with all of the equipment – both wired and wireless – for the new network installed in early 2007. In addition, PNS was instrumental in the implementation of a series of SonicWall 5060 firewalls.
“PNS and ProCurve really came through for us in a big way,” explains Lowe. “To me, a reliable infrastructure is critical for all of our initiatives. Everything we do rides on this medium and our success is gauged on its reliability.”
“Professional Network Solutions delivered that reliable network infrastructure and remain our vendor of choice when it comes to buying new equipment or services. It’s simply a peace of mind that can’t be measured.”
“PNS and ProCurve really came through for us in a big way.”