BENEFITS HIGHLIGHTS

COST-SAVING AUTONOMY ENHANCES COMMUNICATIONS AND ENABLES ADDITIONAL SERVICES
With the exception of one shared data line, the New College converged network is now completely autonomous. The Hayes and 3Com team worked with the New College IT staff around the clock installing equipment in data closets, configuring the network infrastructure and installing analog gateways to accommodate fax machines, alarms, elevators, credit card machines and the school's "blue phones" that connect directly to the police. Their efforts helped make the school's previous $650,000 annual network management expense a thing of the past. Today, even with recurring provider costs, New College realizes savings of more than 25% a year, enabling some funds to flow back to various cost centers. For example, the cost of phone service to the dorms was reduced from $70,000 annually to $15,000, freeing $55,000 for that department's funding of additional student services.

The 3Com converged network has given New College complete control of its phone network. "We are our own phone company," said New College Telco Engineer Cody Stevenson. "We buy the line from US LEC, it terminates on the campus and we control everything from here. It sounds like a small thing, but it's huge." The school negotiates directly with its telecommunications provider, US LEC, to cut its long distance rate in half and expand the local calling area. In addition, the IT staff controls telephone billing and phone maintenance and can customize programming to meet New College's specific needs. The VCX system also allows IT staff to eliminate time-intensive manual tasks. Using a unique access code per cost center enables an automatic cost center tracking system.

While the IT staff installed the new phones and briefed the staff on basic operations, a 3Com Professional Services team trained a room of "super users" — administrators, office managers and fiscal liaisons from the various cost centers. These individuals that IT had identified to be the champions and local expert users from around the campus helped the larger user community enjoy the advanced capabilities of their feature-rich 3Com 3102 Business Phones. An up-to-date, searchable, online user directory has replaced the out-of date hard copy directory. With the touch of a single button, users can forward their calls to their cell phone, another office or to voice mail. The admissions office uses simple-to-set-up hunt groups and auto-attendants to enhance communications with college recruits, parents and students.

Call history, redial and conferencing features are used extensively on campus. The alumni office and the college president's staff are taking advantage of the 3Com IP conferencing application that lets a user or a member of the IT staff set up a teleconference online in less than five minutes, simply by dragging and dropping user names in an intuitive web interface. The teleconference feature makes collaboration and communication fast and easy, and saves New College the expense of using an outside teleconferencing provider.

SMALL IT GROUP EASILY MANAGES SOPHISTICATED SECURE, CONVERGED NETWORK
With 3Com EMS and Network Director, Matola can optimize his small IT staff, enabling responsive service to students, faculty, staff and alumni users and efficiently increasing network control. Cody Stevenson and the Telco staff can now use Power over Ethernet (PoE) to simplify deployment of IP phones and further reduce installation time. Because PoE provides electrical power and network connectivity to devices such as the IP phones, Cody configures and stages each new phone in the IT area, then gives it to a tech staffer to deploy on the user's desk.

Powerful 3Com network management tools simplify and enhance network management with discovery and mapping devices, set-up wizards and troubleshooting tools that can rapidly locate and repair network problems before they can do damage. "Students sometimes plug in rogue network devices or a faculty member may hook up a device incorrectly, which could bring the network to a standstill," commented New College Network Engineer Jeff Smith. "I can detect and disable those devices from my desktop before they have any detrimental effect on the network."

The college's IT staff was able to confidently transition from a single firewall for their Outlook Exchange servers to a robust, campus-wide security system designed to increase both protection and network performance. Today, off-campus users, working from home or while traveling, access their PCs via a secure VPN connection, something they were unable to do before installation of the new 3Com network. And with their new IPS solutions, able to be deployed flexibly, anywhere on the network, the college's IT staff balance campus network security with the speed and access requirements of a creative college environment. They proactively respond to viruses and scams within the campus network and to worms that consume bandwidth, slowing down traffic as they populate and grow. The IPS's ability to simultaneously perform thousands of checks on each packet flow and cleanse the network while allowing good traffic to pass unimpeded has kept the campus network reliabily up and running. "Prior to Tipping Point, the email server or web servers would go down on a weekly basis. Since the new 3Com network was installed, we have experienced no downtime whatsoever from cyber attacks," said Smith.

FLEXIBLE, STATE-OF-THE-ART NETWORK DELIVERS A COMPETITIVE EDGE
With its 3Com infrastructure, New College is able to grow its network at its own pace, based on evolving performance and protection requirements. "With everything new and totally integrated, I am in the enviable position of having time to plan an upgrade strategy," Matola said. "The 3Com network is stable and secure, the network is scalable to meet our future needs and we have a great relationship with 3Com and Hayes that will serve us well."

No longer hindered by a slow, aging data network and outdated phone system, New College now uses a fast, reliable, best-of-breed infrastructure to provide the kind of service high-achieving students demand. Intelligent control nodes provide sophisticated IP flow classification and policy enforcement for superior voice service. A cutting-edge phone system delivers a range of productivity-enhancing, easy-to-use features, leading some users to comment on their "very cool" phones.

The already implemented 3Com WX4400 Wireless Controller has laid the groundwork for wireless connectivity, and new buildings are being outfitted with Wireless Access Point 3750s. Once external antennas are in place, IT staff can provide fast wireless access for Internet research, intranet libraries and campus services. The secure 3Com wireless switch optimizes IT activities. "As each department purchases new access points, the wireless controller will enable us to centrally configure the building's wireless access with a few keystrokes," Smith said. "Deploying a complex wireless network gets a lot easier with a 3Com solution."

According to Matola, New College's 3Com network is not only meeting student, faculty and staff needs, it is helping the college gain recognition within the college IT community. "At a recent college and university CIO meeting," said Matola, "I received numerous comments and congratulations on the new network. We're a small college, but our 3Com solution is helping to boost our reputation."

LOOKING AHEAD

With a return on investment of less than two years, a drastic reduction in operational costs, and cutting-edge technological services that set New College apart, the school can immediately consider implementing a SunGard Luminis Portal, which will give students, faculty and staff easy access to campus services and information via a single log-on. Students will be able to personalize their home pages to easily access campus services, and get email, course assignments and schedules. A common web interface to college learning and research resources, combined with the power of New College's network infrastructure, ensures a vibrant technology-based future for the entire school community.

In addition, the college's wireless network will continue to expand student learning opportunities with campus network access from the cafeteria, break-rooms or outside by the bay. Faculty will be free to conduct classes from the locations that best meet their needs, without losing access to intranet and Internet data. And because the 3Com wireless solution supports wireless IP telephony, faculty can enjoy even greater mobility using 3Com wireless phones.

"3Com helped us achieve our goal of total autonomy, and we have saved the college money, added new services and prepared for the future," Matola said. "I could not have done that with any other company's solution."

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