C H ELMS FORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS

K-12 School District Seamlessly Supports BYOD, Cloud, and Virtualization Initiatives with Enterasys Network Products

CASE STUD Y
Industry:
K-12

District Stats:
Networking IT Staff: 2 Students/Faculty/Staff: 6,050 Located in Chelmsford, MA, the Chelmsford Public School District serves 6,050 students, faculty and staff at one pre-school, four elementary schools, two middle schools, one high school and the central offices for the school administration building. To aid in the their mission of cultivating inspired, creative and well-rounded lifelong learners, Chelmsford Public Schools upgraded their network to provide a 21st century learning environment with BYOD, cloud and virtualization initiatives. The Enterasys solution has made it possible for a network staff of two to easily manage the network and the additional 1,000 personal devices that have been brought to school and provide access to cloud-based services from home for 800 staff members. Locations: 9

Challenges:
Upgrade network to support BYOD, cloud and virtualization initiatives Provide reliable, easy-to-manage wired and wireless coverage Support technology initiatives (PARCC and UDL)

Business Challenge
Chelmsford Public Schools sought to replace their slow, aging Cisco network and bring their school district into the 21st Century. In order to support BYOD, cloud, virtualization and digital curriculum initiatives, the school district required a network upgrade to deliver the robust wired and wireless coverage which they required. Security, reliability and ease-of-management would be critical as they prepared to allow students to bring their own devices to school and enable the staff to access applications and documents from home via the cloud while continuing to provide network access without incident for their large population. The network would also be crucial for implementing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) which would outfit older classrooms with 21st Century technology such as iPads, Apple TVs, interactive white boards and document cameras, to name a few. In addition, the new network would be critical in preparing for future technology requirements such as the Common Core online standardized assessment, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), which would require Chelmsford Public Schools to increase the number of computers and iPads on the network and provide the density to enable the possibility of every student in grades 3-11 to take the online test at the same time.

Products Utilized:
S-Series modular switches B- & G-Series switches OneFabric Control Center NetSight network management Mobile IAM IdentiFi Wireless Access Points and Controllers

Results:
Stable, secure BYOD network Bullet-proof wireless network Centralized network Management

Enterasys Solution
Chelmsford Public Schools had old and aging Cisco equipment that was not providing good management of the network. They selected Enterasys, along with Rutter Networking to help with the network integration, for a proven wired and wireless solution that could interoperate with their multi-vendor network that includes a Checkpoint firewall and servers from EMC, HP and Dell, and take them well into the 21st Century.

The new Enterasys OneFabric architecture allows Chelmsfords two-person IT staff to simply manage and secure the network across all nine locations no matter what devices students or staff use. NetSight has been a big help in reducing the network management complexity by bringing the entire network into one, unified view. Enterasys IdentiFi Wireless provides reliable Wi-Fi access so students and faculty have fast network access no matter where they are. The Enterasys S-Series switches have allowed them to increase the bandwidth at their biggest schools, the high school and middle school, and also to handle the traffic of the town/school shared virtual environment, which includes a virtualized media server with over 400 educational videos streamed to various classrooms. According to Anne-Marie Fiore, Executive Director of Technology and Information Services, The wireless is really bullet proof. To have 1,600 students coming to high school and connecting to the network with their own personal devices and to have never intervened once with a technical support issue is significant. In addition, the staff has embraced the new wireless network and has enabled the Chelmsford High School business department to move to an entirely digital curriculum using a combination of iPads and BYOD paving the way for the middle schools to follow suit this fall. The new Enterasys core switch has allowed them to increase from 1 Gig to 10 Gig in some locations, which in addition to increasing the speed of the network, has allowed them to easily increase the amount of computers and iPads on the network, as they prepare to allow 3,600 students to take an online test simultaneously as part of their PARCC readiness initiative.

Results
The Enterasys solution has enabled Chelmsford Public Schools to provide reliable wireless coverage for 5,250 students across nine locations and seamlessly support BYOD, cloud and virtualization initiatives while increasing the productivity of a two-person IT team by providing: 1. Stable, secure BYOD network: Chelmsford has found their BYOD environment to be very easy to manage and the IT team has been able to seamlessly support 47 applications running across the district and 33 different apps running on iPads with no complaints. Network access is sanctioned and the network is secured as students access the Internet while IT ensures that the network is protected from any potential damage. 2. Bullet-proof wireless network: Since deploying their Wi-Fi network in 2012 they have had no wireless issues whatsoever from the 1,600 connected students, according to Fiore. In addition they are able to provide teachers access to cloud-based services from home, support their virtualized server environment, outfit older classrooms with new network-supported technology and add hundreds of computers and 14 iPad labs across their locations. 3. Centralized management: The OneFabric architecture has brought the entire network into one, unified view for ultimate ease of management. Having a reliable infrastructure makes everything else we do and deploy a lot easier, says Bill ORourke, Network Manager. NetSight has been a big help by allowing them to see if a particular building or part of the network is down. With less time being spent managing the network, the small IT team has been able to increase their productivity significantly. Even though Chelmsford Public Schools does not have the opportunity to work directly with the Enterasys support staff because they work through their integration partner, Rutter, Fiore says, I love when we have the Enterasys people involved in collaboration with our network integrator. She remembers a specific Enterasys support representative by name and says, He was completely awesome. In response to my concern that the wireless was not as robust as it could be, he came out and reviewed the map of the wireless APs and adjusted the numbers. As a result the solution has been totally successful. Thanks to their Enterasys solution, Chelmsford Public Schools is confident that they can handle their current and future technology-dependent educational needs including having all classrooms up-to-date with new technology devices by 2020 as part of UDL, being prepared for PARCC, looking at incorporating MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and moving toward digital textbooks.

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