London South Bank University
Data Integration works in partnership with London South
Bank University to improve network reliability and
security.
Starting life as the Borough Polytechnic, London South Bank
University has been part of the local landscape for over a
century. One of the Capital's oldest universities, it has
been providing students with relevant and practical employment
skills since 1892.
Vocational courses featured at LSBU even before the term was
thought of and today offers one of the most vocationally-orientated
course portfolios available. With only 1500 places in Halls of
Residence, the University attracts many students who commute from
the surrounding areas, so it is committed to maintaining close
links with local employers and community, and works very closely
with local boroughs.
25% of London's nurses are trained at LSBU, and when nurses
stopped being trained in teaching hospitals in the 1980s, it became
a Health and Social Care faculty, training nurses, radiographers,
and physiotherapists.
Meeting student expectations
Just as in the world of commerce, Higher Education institutions
must compete for their customers which, in their case, are
students. A recent LSBU survey revealed that students have
very high expectations when it comes to IT provision, and informs
their choice of where to continue their education. Wojtek
Adamek, Director of ICT, says, Being able to meet todays
unprecedented demand for technology with the IT services we provide
gives us a key differentiator from our competitors. In fact,
we believe that those in the HE sector not able to meet this level
of demand simply wont survive and will look to merge with other
institutions to gain the scale required to support advanced IT.
It hasnt always been that way at LSBU, though. When Wojtek
joined last year, fresh from the commercial sector, he arrived at
the tail end of technical discussions about the implementation of a
new network, the tender having been won by IT services and
integration company, Data Integration.
Unique IT challenges
The technology requirements of the HE sector vary greatly from
those of a commercial environment. A network has to deal with
requests that would simply not arise in the business world, Wojtek
remarks. In addition to the straightforward commercial
applications, we have students using bandwidth-hungry Skype,
YouTube, and Facebook, and researchers and academic staff demanding
zero downtime on 24 x 7 Internet access. This heavy usage
pushes the network to its limits, and the old network was simply
not up to coping with this type of demand.
These very specific requirements called for a technology partner
with a proven understanding of the HE sector. Wojtek
comments, Data Integrations experience of implementing projects
with other universities was certainly a contributing factor to
their being awarded the tender.
In addition, they understand that we have to accommodate requests
that would never crop up in a commercial environment. For
example, the security that Data Integration has built into the
network allows us to close off part of the network so the Computing
Department can offer an Ethical Hacking course.
With LSBU moving towards unified communications, the network, will
at some stage, have to sustain data and voice. Data
Integrations solution for the 7000 port network across 14 buildings
was designed with a resilient core based on Extreme Networks'
BlackDiamond core switches split across two data centres, Extreme
Summit X450s in the distribution layer, and Extreme Summit edges
switches. Extreme Networks' EAPS (Ethernet Automatic
Protection Switching) and QoS technology make the network very
reliable, ideal for latency-sensitive applications such as IP
telephony. The DNS and DHCP infrastructure has been made more
resilient and manageable using Infoblox appliances.
The university increased its capacity into the SuperJANET network
and implemented resilient connections which Data Integration
secured with Juniper ISG firewalls using BGP (Border Gateway
Protocol). The university's SuperJANET gateways are also
secured with Fortinet multi-vector anti-virus gateways.
A Juniper Networks SSL VPN provides remote access for
staff. Wojtek comments: "This can be a lonely place to work
after hours, but the SSL VPN means staff can work from home late
into the night if they need to."
Security requirements
Security management is also a major issue in HE, with a constant
stream of guests, visitors, conference delegates. There are
also many of the 23,500 students bringing in their own laptops and
connecting to the network to download applications, compounded by a
fresh intake of 7000 new students each year. Whilst some
downloads can be restricted, "We can't", for example, says Wojtek,
"stop those that are used in a teaching environment, such as BBC
iPlayer or Facebook."
"We're using ForeScout's CounterACT product to ensure that anyone
wishing to connect to our network complies with our security
policy. For example, we make sure that their machine is
running up-to-date anti-virus software, a specified level of
Microsoft Service Pack, and that theres an absence of malware. The
ForeScout device also monitors network traffic for unusual or
suspicious behaviour after a user has connected to the network, and
if anything potentially damaging is detected that traffic is
quarantined to stop it spreading around the network and
jeopardising continuity. This is really vital to mitigate
security risks in our environment because we have very little
control over the state of students' PCs."
Tight timescales
In HE the timing of major infrastructure upgrade implementations
is critical because work can only be carried out during the
University holidays. LSBU is closed for 10 days at Christmas and
theres an unusually tight window of just 4 weeks in the summer
break, from exam boards to Summer Recruitment. This meant
that Data Integrations project management of the installation and
commissioning had to be strictly managed.
Initially, Data Integration provided just hardware maintenance for
LSBU, but now monitors the network 24x7, and a DI engineer is
embedded on site. Wojtek comments, "This is proving a great
success and helps our two organisations work even more closely
together. Another advantage is 24x7 monitoring. Sarah,
the DI engineer, has become a fully-involved, integral member of
our network team. With her understanding, she is able to run
all the reports we need, which helps me to prove the root cause of
IT performance problems and resolve any network-based issues more
quickly."
The new network has enabled Wojtek to run the network more
efficiently and keep his headcount down to a team of 4.
Annual benchmarking studies comparing LSBU with other universities
bear this out. Wojtek comments, "Compared to universities of
similar size, we're about 12 IT people less and £1.5m less in
spend. We're significantly ahead of some of our competitors
and in my opinion, that's down to the network."
What Does the Future Hold?
LSBU's new IT infrastructure puts the University in an ideal
position to take advantage of massive redevelopments taking place
in the Elephant and Castle, close to where the University is
located. One of the very first ever shopping centres, built
in the 1960s, it will be demolished to make way for a new retail
centre and 10,000 new homes. The area will be flooded with
fibre cabling onto which the University can link in order to
enhance the further education of local people.
"We're very excited about the future", comments Wojtek.
"We're now delivering our students first class IT services, and can
enhance their learning and our ability to teach them through our
IT. The new network has enabled us to roll out wireless and,
as mentioned earlier, we are moving towards unified
communications.
"24x7 monitoring has been identified by the faculties as critical,
so Data Integration will also be monitoring our key services such
as Exchange, Blackboard, and web services. This approach will
save us in the region of £100,000 per year compared with
alternative outsourced support."
Their relationship with Data Integration underpins many of these
planned initiatives. Wojtek says,"Our partnership with Data
Integration gives us confidence. DI has taken the
trouble to understand us as a customer better than any other
supplier, working so closely with us that sometimes they go native,
and become more LSBU than DI! The quality of their staff is
first class; they're proactive, often feeding me information about
new developments in advance of my needing it."
Wojtek recently attended the UCISA Conference, the IT directors
forum for HE. "Someone said that networks are now a strategic
part of IT, and I couldnt agree more", he comments. "We
couldn't achieve our future goals without the network, and we
couldn't start to deliver key courses in our Computing and
Engineering schools or deliver critical new applications such as
CRM. As we grow internally and the number of affiliated
students working internationally increases, we must have a robust
network for 24x7 delivery."
LSBU is now planning to bring its halls of residence network up to
the same standard as their campus network, and Data Integration
will be designing, installing, and managing this too.
Centralising IT and standardising on products (rather than leaving
each department to procure and manage its own kit) simplifies the
management of the network and reduces our procurement costs.
By having a single, centralised platform the network team can
provide a better service to their customers.
About London South Bank University
London South Bank University is a dynamic, inner-city university
with a diverse multi-cultural population of some 23,500 students
and around 2,500 staff. For over 100 years the university has
provided top quality teaching and learning, underpinned by relevant
research and delivered in an environment that is focused on the
needs of its students and the great capital city of London.
Students and staff come from every part of the community and from
all over the world, making our campus truly multicultural.
The courses offered are flexible and closely linked to the needs of
industry and the professions, with particular specialities in
health (nursing and allied health professions); computing; internet
and multimedia; accountancy, business studies, marketing and
management; engineering, applied science, forensic and sports
science; architecture, construction and estate management; tourism,
hospitality and law; social sciences, arts, media studies, digital
media, photography and video production; English, psychology and a
new exciting programme of Combined Honours degrees. New two year
Foundation Degrees are also available in some subject areas.
To support the activities of the University, the Information &
Communication Technology department (ICT) have developed the IT
networking infrastructures across the campus to meet the changing
and growing needs of students, staff, management, and faculties
alike. Demands for capacity, reliability, speed, and access
have grown hand in hand with the increasing threats to the
University from virus attacks, DOS attacks and hackers - not only
externally but internally also.
The University is now developing its ICT services to meet not only
the current requirements for network development, but also to plan
and implement a strategy for the future, which is sustainable and
achievable. The University has now built a strong
relationship with trusted partner Data Integration, to help design
and implement services and solutions to support and underpin the
delivery of this strategy.
Back to Customers
