Cisco sets girls' school on steep learning curve

Teachers already have cordless VoIP phones from Cisco running over the Wi-Fi network and Suresh says the short-term plan is to have around 200 UC handsets. The schools will also soon be taking possession of a handful of Cisco’s new enterprise-oriented Cius tablets.

While the solution at PLC is highly sophisticated by education standards, it is also more advanced than that currently available at many similar sized businesses. The uniqueness of the deployment therefore demanded PLC approach the project with caution so the needs of teachers and students were properly addressed.

“There were specific problems we wanted to resolve,” she stresses. “Collaboration, sharing of video, media, and the need for more flexibility – everything they [students ] needed to progress with their education.”

Much of the legacy equipment at PLC was from 3Com and NEC. Most of the gear was deployed years ago when the school had fewer students and staff. PLC looked at alternative solutions from vendors but wasn’t satisfied they had the necessary smarts to deliver the best solution.

“We were moving from a medium-sized organisation to a large organisation,” Suresh says. At the end of the day Cisco was able to deliver a better solution. Things that were hard with 3Com became seamless with Cisco.”

The other thing that pleased Suresh about going with Cisco was that the school was able to effectively standardise on the one platform, meaning the management of future projects would be less troublesome. “We knew we needed to standardise.”

The school worked with Cisco via two of the company’s partners, UC specialists iVision and networking integrator Somerville.

While iVision was largely concerned with the video side, Somerville provided the UC solution which encompassed switching, delivery of the wireless network, LAN management as well as call manager, communications manager, unified voice mail and presence.

Company director David Folkard says that while Somerville has plenty of experience in the education market, the deployment at PLC presented him with a fairly steep learning curve.

“There was a fair amount of this that was brand new for me,” he recalls.

In addition the school set a very aggressive deadline.