Success Stories: WCCC

WESTMORELAND COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Background

Network Access' systematic approach to a redesign of the Cisco infrastructure resulted in this prominent regional community college saving money while giving students and teachers a more efficient, fast, and secure network.

Company: Westmoreland County Community College

Industry: Education

“Network Access' engagement processes enabled us to systematically transform our old network into an efficient, easy to manage, high-speed information delivery system that better serves our students and faculty while reducing overall operating costs.”

Westmoreland County Community College

One of the most historic counties in Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County offers the small-town charm that the rest of the country only dreams about. It’s no wonder that students there often choose to attend Westmoreland County Community College, rather than leave the scenic beauty of this cluster of small towns tucked away in the Allegheny Mountains.

Serving approximately 6,000 students throughout its main campus, six remote campuses and a public safety training center, Westmoreland County Community College delivers 55 associates degree, 10 diploma, and 41 certificate programs. The college’s dedication to learning, student success, and innovation is facilitated by its dedication to providing state-of-the-art facilities, Internet access and an extensive wide-area network connecting all eight locations.

Challenge

Over the past ten years, Westmoreland County Community College has seen a lot of growth. New programs and new technology has consistently contributed to the educational experience. But technological changes happened quickly, and it proved difficult for the network to keep up with the growth and demands for connectivity. The network functioned, but lacked a unified design and standardization. Because of these limitations, network problems were often difficult to troubleshoot. Also, limited bandwidth resulted in constant complaints about slow Internet access.

Network Access met the challenge of a complete network redesign head-on with its own five-step Service Delivery Process Model (SDPM). “Rooted in international standards such as ITIL and CoBIT, SDPM is a very simple engagement process that Network Access has developed to manage the operational aspects of complex client engagements. SDPM is a management tool that keeps everyone on track and on the same page throughout any given project said Jim Barnes, President of Network Access”

The first phase of SDPM identified the critical objectives, highlighted the problems, and set the stage for what would be a dramatic improvement. “We had acquired a new high-speed fiber connection, but because of the patched-together legacy system, we were unable to take full advantage of it,” said Pat McKoula, IT Director for Westmoreland. “Over our holiday break, Network Access came in and redesigned our entire network to make better use of that new fiber connectivity. The results were astounding.”

Solution

After identifying the requirements, Network Access’ proprietary five-step process went on through the blueprint, roadmap, transformation, and improvement stages, incorporating a set of best practices that guarantee high-quality solutions. Chuck Bell, Service Delivery Manager at Network Access, noted, “Because the network had evolved over many years as opposed to being implemented in a single coherent vision, documentation was limited. Mapping out the network ‘blueprint’ gave us a better idea of what we were looking at.” Over a two-day period, the Network Access team was able to identify every single element of the network, map out the flow of network traffic, identify all of the VLANs and other network pathways, and then create the “roadmap,” or plan of action that would transform the entire multi-campus network.

Technology Overview

Over the next three weeks, the transformation phase actually put the plan into action. The college’s core Cisco switch was upgraded, a new Packeteer packet shaping device was added, and they went from an older Cisco PIX firewall to a new Cisco ASA firewall, which was better suited to the multi-campus configuration. Every switch at every location was reconfigured to match the new architecture, and all new equipment was configured consistent with the overall implementation plan.

After completing the LAN phase of the transformation, Network Access's Solutions Architects tackled the WAN, which previously had multiple circuits to each location. “Each location had both a frame relay and a point-to-point circuit, one for faculty and staff, and one for students. We eliminated the costly frame relay circuits, running only the single point-to-point connection to each campus, and saved the college about $3,000 a month in the process,” said Bell. An access control list was deployed to impose a granular level of authorization, to keep the student network separate from parts of the network that are restricted to faculty and staff.

Results

The final, critical step was completed only after the entire infrastructure was in place and running. “We take time to look back over the whole system and verify that every goal was achieved; and beyond that, we review details of the new system down to a very granular level to identify if there are still any areas that can be improved,” said Bell. Concrete benefits to the university included:

A unified IT infrastructure
Cost savings through WAN consolidation
Faster and more reliable network and Internet access
Simpler problem resolution and greater confidence in the network

At the end of the project, Westmoreland was able to provide its users with dramatically improved service, faster Internet connectivity, and greater confidence in the network.

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