Blog Post

Case Study: Moseley School and Sixth Form

Simplify IT • 5 May 2021

With its proud Victorian roots, stunning architecture and famous alumni of rock stars and sportspeople, you’d be forgiven for thinking Moseley School didn’t need to rely on modern technology. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Moseley School may have a rich and illustrious history, but this a very modern school with modern requirements and needed a modern network to be deployed - to allow over 1500 students and staff to all have access to services using mobile devices.

This created 2 major challenges:

The WiFi would need a significant upgrade.
The existing core network would not be suitable to support such a high number of concurrent users.

As a result, Moseley school went to market to choose a solution that would be suitable. The school reviewed various technologies and resellers, and chose a Meraki based solution that had been designed by Simplify IT Solutions. This also included 10 year licensing, 10 year warranty and of course, world class support from Cisco. All of which gave this solution distinct advantages over competitors, especially with interest free financing options too.

Tools for Schools

Simplify IT used Ekahau WiFi survey tools to ensure the solution proposed was an exact fit to meet the exact WiFi needs. In addition, the traffic flow was reviewed and the core network backbone was upgraded to support the predicted bandwidth. The solution had to be in place and support the future needs of the school for the next decade.

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Perfect Partner

Simplify IT was chosen as the preferred partner as they had a really good understanding of all the technologies that were being considered. The use of WiFi survey tools really helped Moseley School understand how different WiFi access points and their location would fundamentally affect and improve the user experience.

Meraki - the best solution

Meraki was a good offering, as it allowed the network to be managed using a cloud management interface. The solution provided insight into the user activity including applications network usage. In addition, the ability to make a single policy change to lock device types, or applications ensured the network was much easier to manage.

The new technology provided better performance, improved analytics, but also much easier fault diagnosis and management. Visibility of application usage is a must for security and also identification of issues.

Deployment

After selecting Simplify IT Solutions and Meraki the next step was the deployment of the solution.

The new solution included 48 switches and 70 WiFi access points (APs), all of which would need to be deployed in a 2 week window without service interruption.

Simplify IT Solutions deployed all 48 switches, 70 access points, and swapped all cabling into the new network. The project was completed ahead of schedule, and when all the users returned, zero calls were raised on the new network.

Highly Recommended

Meraki was perfect as the chosen solution, as it’s easy to manage and provides great insight into user / application traffic. According to Moseley School, Simplify IT Solutions have been an excellent partner with a ‘can do’ attitude. Their attention to detail and levels of expertise are so rare to find, yet they were the most competitive offering for a like-for-like solution. The school are really pleased with how the solution has been designed and deployed and the Simplify IT Solutions team are highly recommended.

Outcome

Moseley School are very proud that they have deployed an enterprise grade solution - allowing them to provide the latest generations of technology to students today and for years to come.

A core network upgrade is not an insignificant piece of work, and choosing the correct technology and partner is very important.

Read a Testimonial from the school below...

"All round excellence"

“From the very first conversation to the last UAT test, Simplify IT provided an amazing service.

We refreshed our infrastructure with a Cisco Meraki solution, replacing in the region of 50 switches and 70 APs. This was all done with very little downtime and no issues or concerns.

Every member of the company that we met have great knowledge of their particular roles and tasks and all enjoy working for the company. The management are very progressive and get involved in the projects to ensure that the deliverable meets the requirements and expectations, and also that the very best deal is done on your behalf.

This company goes above and beyond. Thank you to the whole team."

Rob Camm - IT Manager

Moseley School and Sixth Form

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