[April 12, 2016]

Teachers College Enables 21st Century Learning and Life-Changing Research with HPE/Aruba Network

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE:HPE), today announced that Teachers College (TC), Columbia University's Graduate School of Education, Health and Psychology, is implementing a full suite of HPE and Aruba wired and wireless solutions to enable a 21^st century education environment and to support the significant research the College conducts. With a portfolio of HPE core and data center switches, Aruba Wi-Fi, access switches and mobility controllers, AirWave (News - Alert) network management, ClearPass Policy Manager and Aruba Mobile Engagement solution, Teachers College can give its 5,300 students spread across eight, interconnected campus buildings quick and reliable access to essential resources via any mobile device.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160412005465/en/

With the new HPE/Aruba infrastructure in place, Teachers College students can collaborate effectively and easily in a 21st century classroom environment. (Photo: Business Wire)

Teachers College is the first and largest graduate school of education in the United States and is also perennially ranked among the nation's best. The College is committed to a vision of education writ large, encompassing four core areas of expertise: health, education, leadership, and psychology.

With the growth of the College, its aggressive research and classroom agendas, and the increasing number of mobile devices that students are bringing to campus, the IT department found it needed a new infrastructure to address mobility, personal devices and bandwidth needs. According to Naveed Husain, CIO for Teachers College, giving these students dependable access via their own various mobile devices both in the classroom and around campus was the key driver behind the College's decision to replace its legacy Cisco (News - Alert) wireless equipment and update the network.

"As the nation's leading graduate school, we really needed to embrace the digital world and put the right infrastructure in place now to ensure we're ready for our future needs," Husain said. "And our students, most of whom are in Masters or PhD programs, need classrooms in which they can connect and share their content online and in real time, which means reliable Wi-Fi is critical to meeting their needs."

Like many institutions of higher learning, Teachers College is also moving rapidly toward classrooms of the future, with a plan for 52 classroom updates, seven of which will be completed by the end of 2016. The new classrooms will be completely wireless and devices will have wall-mounted touch-screens. Already, the College is enabling students to bring their own devices into the classrooms to present using Apple (News - Alert) TV and Chromecast over Wi-Fi connections. Many of these students are streaming content, as well, and Husain notes that all of these capabilities are dependent upon a stable wireless infrastructure.

"If the wireless doesn't work or the experience is bad, students will be vocal and IT will hear about it. No CIO wants to be in that situation," he stated.

These same wireless capabilities are required in the Teachers College offices and conference rooms - the latter of which the College has outfitted with Apple TVs just like the classrooms. In addition, the College will rely on the network to facilitate the big data research that Teachers College students and faculty conduct both on campus and remotely, as this research is fundamental to the College's mission.

To address all of these needs, Teachers College evaluated next-generation solutions from both Cisco and HPE/Aruba. The College concluded HPE/Aruba could best meet its challenges with the vendor's current, integrated portfolio and planned roadmap and what the College deemed overall better support and service.

For its data center network, Teachers College will use HPE FlexFabric 12508 core switches for redundancy, which provide connectivity for an array of HPE FlexFabric 5930 Series leaf switches for top-of-rack server access, all managed by the HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC). The access layer includes Aruba 5400R and 3810 switches and on the wireless side, Aruba 225 Series 802.11ac Access Points, and 7200 Series Mobility Controllers. The ClearPass Policy Manager provides access control, policy management, onboarding and guest services. The College is also using AirWave network management to provide full visibility into how the wireless network is performing and for fast troubleshooting and problem resolution. TC plans to complete the wireless deployment by Spring 2016 and the wired deployment later in the year.

ClearPass is particularly important for Teachers College as they will use it to provision all of their devices securely and apply policies to provide different levels of network access depending on user and device type. Husain noted that this is particularly important since Columbia University has a free lab policy, allowing anyone to use the Wi-Fi free of charge and without logging in. With ClearPass, the College can utilize 802.1x authentication to deliver the security required, while maintaining an "easy access" lab experience, without requiring that users frequently enter passwords. The College also plans to use ClearPass for wired access in the future to enable a consistent user experience across networks whether wireless or wired and so that different users on different devices can be given varying privileges automatically.

HPE/Aruba's thought leadership and support for Software Defined Networking (SDN) was also a significant factor in the College's choice of vendors. Teachers College plans to leverage HPE's SDN solution to program their network to align with the organization's needs. Said Husain, "HPE/Aruba has one of the industry's broadest SDN offerings which we can use to collaborate with the SDN initiatives provided by other vendors in our ecosystem."

Looking ahead, Teachers College plans to expand their existing mobile app with the Aruba Mobile Engagement solution. The College has already begun deploying Aruba Beacons in several buildings on campus and will use the Meridian Mobile App Platform to enhance their mobile app with wayfinding and other features including push notifications. For example, Teachers will be able to send students notifications for campus events providing details such as a date or time change, available amenities and food at the event or information on post-event gatherings. The College could also use the beacons and mobile app to send emergency alerts to provide students with important safety instructions.

Said Husain, "The expectation for our network, whether from the perspective of a student, guest, faculty member or employee is that it should just work. It's like turning on the lights in a room or the water at a faucet. It should be that simple. We think our HPE/Aruba network will give us the best opportunity to ensure this peace of mind."

About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading provider of next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower organizations to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users who rely on cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their work and personal lives.

To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.

©2015 Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, Aruba's trademarks include Aruba Networks®, Aruba The Mobile Edge (News - Alert) Company® (stylized), Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks™, Aruba Mobility Management System®, People Move Networks Must Follow®, Mobile Edge Architecture®, RFProtect®, Green Island®, ETips®, ClientMatch®, Virtual Intranet Access^TM, ClearPass Access Management Systems^TM, Aruba Instant^TM, ArubaOS^TM, xSec^TM, ServiceEdge^TM, Aruba ClearPass Access Management System^TM, Airmesh^TM, AirWave^TM, Aruba Central^TM, and ARUBA@WORK^TM. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160412005465/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]