Case Study   Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel (ESHTE) (Portugal)   Leading European Tourism and Hotel Management School Pioneers 3Com® Security and Voice Solutions to Better Prepare Students Organization: Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies (ESHTE) Location: Estoril, Portugal Employees: 150 Market Segment: Higher Education Applications: Virtual private networks (VPNs); NBX® pcXset Softphones; voice mail; call forwarding; automated attendants; Microsoft Office; the Fidelio hotel management application; Global Distribution System - Galileo; Check Point NG FireWall-1/VPN-1; Internet Security Systems (ISS) RealSecure intrusion detection system. The Challenge Founded in 1992, the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies prepares skilled professionals for two overlapping industries vital in Europe—tourism and hospitality. On a three-building campus in Estoril on Portugal southern coast, the four-year school offers courses in hotel management, tour operating management, tourism information, cookery and food production, and leisure and tourism entertainment management. Graduates go on to rewarding careers as restaurateurs, hotel managers, and tourism directors in Portugal, the rest of continent, and worldwide. The Estoril Higher Institute also offers post-graduate courses in partnership with Cornell University in the US, also renowned for its hospitality training program, and other schools. It has 1,200 students, some of whom live in a training hotel on campus. Reflecting the importance of tourism on Portugal's economy, the institute is supported by the country's Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Education. To provide its students with the finest education possible, the institute needed to improve its communications dramatically. Its legacy data network, which provided basic Ethernet connectivity, was overmatched by new generations of applications and resources, many of which are designed exclusively for the tourism/hospitality industries. The system was unable to segment users into groups for more efficient use of available bandwidth. It was already too slow to support additional links, limiting student and faculty access to the Internet and each other. When working outside the campus, professors and students were unable to connect to the ESHTE Intranet at all. Additionally, although the institute had an open connection to the Internet, its prior network lacked robust security. It relied only on a router and proxy server, which were unable to protect the school against today's networking threats. Moreover, the institute used basic telephones that connected only to the public telephony system. Faculty and administrators were unable to reach each other via extensions and their phones lacked capabilities like voicemail, call forwarding, voice conferencing, or automated attendants. As a result, the institute lacked the voice services needed to link students and faculty, and to bolster administrative productivity. Adding to the challenge, the institute's phones were costly to maintain, despite their limitations. Because of the complexity of traditional telephone technology, the school's administrators needed to schedule expensive on-site visits from vendor service technicians every time a handset needed to be added, moved, or changed. To maintain its standing as a leading school for tourism and hospitality, the institute had to greatly improve its data and voice services. It needed a robust network to support and enhance its academic and business operations, effortlessly delivering the most demanding applications. The network also had to provide connectivity and Internet access whenever and wherever needed on campus, as well as to faculty at home and guest lecturers. Moreover, the system needed to be secure, ensuring no one but authorized users can access the school's data and applications, and all messaging is kept confidential. Additionally, the institute required a modern, business-class phone system with the latest features to bolster voice services among faculty and students. The solution needed to be economical to own and operate, and available to faculty even off campus. Finally, Estoril Higher Institute wanted the most modern solutions available. It wanted to deploy a communications infrastructure that was powerful, fully-featured, cost-effective, and sufficiently scalable to meet the school's needs well into the future. Why 3Com For assistance, the Estoril Higher Institute turned to its value-added reseller, IEMS. To meet the school's voice and data needs, IEMS found that 3Com platforms most effectively met the school's demand for advanced but economical systems. Moreover, to provide the Estoril Higher Institute with a comprehensive yet affordable security solution, IEMS requested the 3Com Security Switch 6200 from 3Com. The institute was the first deployment of security switching platform in Europe and now enjoys an end-to-end 3Com solution based on 3Com's secure integrated network architecture. The Estoril Higher Institute now uses: 3Com Security Switch 6200 Read more here 3Com SuperStack® 3 NBX® Networked Telephony Solution Read more here 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4924 Read more here 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 Read more here 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR Read more here 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4226T Read more here 3Com Wireless LAN Access Point 7250 Read more here 3Com NBX pcXset Softphones Read more here 3Com 11a/b/g Wireless PC Card with XJACK® Antenna Read more here 3Com Network Supervisor Read more here The Estoril Higher Institute built a Gigabit Ethernet network with the 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4924 at its core. The system distributes Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to four SuperStack 3 Switch 4226T platforms via copper links and to six SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 devices over fiber links. The 3Com Security Switch 6200 platform resides at the school's Internet gateway and supports VPNs for all users. Three SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR switches provide network connectivity, as well as electrical power, to 27 3Com Access Point 7250 wireless systems installed throughout the campus. The school outfitted professors' and students' laptop computers with 3Com 11a/b/g Wireless PC Cards with XJACK Antenna. The institute linked a SuperStack 3 NBX chassis to the core and deployed 30 NBX handsets for faculty, administrators, and secretaries. The SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR also powers some of the phones. The Benefits 3Com delivered the communication solutions that enabled Estoril Higher Institute to remain a world-class school in its field. Powered by robust SuperStack 3 switching platforms, the school's network provides the bandwidth and functionality to rapidly deliver the most advanced applications and services. Students and faculty, for example, can quickly access Fidelio, a hotel management application, and Galileo, a Global Distribution System, both of which are widely used within the tourism/hospitality industries throughout the world. They can routinely deploy the Microsoft Office suite of tools for studies, as well as access the Web for resources and news. Moreover, the institute now can segment its network for students and faculty, ensuring a more efficient utilization of bandwidth. The Estoril Higher Institute also attained the highest levels of security thanks to Europe's first deployment of the innovative 3Com Security Switch 6200. A powerful sentinel at the campus Internet portal, the platform provides security services tailored to the school's needs at a fraction of the cost of purchasing these capabilities separately. It supports, for example, the Check Point NG FireWall-1/VPN-1 solution that repels all unauthorized users from accessing the institute's network and resources, and the ISS RealSecure intrusion detection system. It also provides firewall support, content and spam filters, antivirus scanners, IDS, and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). With all of these security functions integrated within one platform, it is easier to configure and manage than multiple security appliances. As a result, the Estoril Higher Institute now has a powerful, pervasive, and cost-effective security framework in place. The school also economically extended connectivity throughout its campus with 3Com Wireless LAN Access Point 7250 systems. Using these 802.11g standards-based systems, the institute provided pervasive, untethered networking without the cost of installing and maintaining wiring infrastructures. The devices provide speeds up to 54 Mbps at distances as far as 100 meters (328 feet), ensuring faculty and students can always access their web applications and email rapidly and easily. Additionally, using the 3Com 11a/b/g Wireless PC Cards with XJACK® Antenna in their laptops, students, professors, and administrative staff can conveniently link to the network anywhere on campus. To further economize, the Estoril Higher Institute uses its SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR switches to deliver electrical power, as well as network connectivity, to the 3Com Access Point 7250 systems. This strategy allows the school to power these devices without the expense of installing additional electrical wiring and outlets in its facilities. By deploying a 3Com NBX IP telephony solution, the Estoril Higher Institute eliminated the need for a separate wiring infrastructure just for voice services. The 3Com system relies on the school's data network to deliver all voice traffic, providing for a unified phone system throughout the campus. Faculty and staff rely on the system's standard features like voicemail, voice conference, and call forwarding, even to cell phones, to expedite communications. Automated attendants allow callers to easily reach the school's departments after hours to leave messages. Additionally, the 3Com platform is easy enough for school administrators to manage themselves. To add a phone, for example, they merely plug an NBX handset into an available Ethernet jack on the network, avoiding the need for vendor service technicians to reconfigure the system. Some of the schools NBX phones are even powered by a SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 PWR switch, avoiding the need for electrical outlets. To further achieve state-of-the-art communications, the Estoril Higher Institute pioneered the use of 3Com NBX pcXset Softphones in Portugal. For the first time anywhere in the country, users are deploying their computers as telephones, doing away with the need for stand-alone handsets. Faculty use their multimedia-enabled laptops and desktops for voice services, placing calls simply by clicking on phone numbers in the Microsoft Outlook email application. Professors, for example, use their laptops to access the school's phone system from home via secure VPN connections. To simplify management of its networking infrastructure, school administrators use 3Com Network Supervisor to operate and control the system. The easy-to-use management application graphically discovers, maps, and displays network links and IP devices, including 3Com NBX telephones and some popular third-party products. "3Com showed us that the most modern and advanced communications solutions can also be very affordable and use to use," said Professor João Pronto, coordinator of information technologies, the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies. "We economized on our voice and data costs while providing the institute's entire community with greatly enhanced capabilities. Additionally, with our 3Com Security Switch, we have peace of mind knowing that our expanded infrastructure will remain safe and private. Because communications are at the core of education, we'll better prepare our students for excellence and success in the real world thanks to 3Com."