Innoventures Education is upgrading network infrastructure at its UAE schools to create a fully integrated digital learning environment that will improve teaching and learning for both staff and students.
A Hewlett Packard Enterprise business, Aruba has installed wired and wireless networking solutions to five Innoventures Education institutions to deliver 100 percent Wi-Fi coverage and seamless roaming across their campuses.
Over 10,000 devices connect to the network from across the Innoventures Education Group’s five school campuses, thanks to the installation of over 1,000 access points.
Poonam Bhojani, CEO, Innoventures Education, says, “Aruba’s wired and wireless connectivity has eliminated the physical boundaries of the campus and enabled our students and teachers to stay connected, both on campus and online. This has made it possible for us to deliver anywhere, anytime teaching and learning, thereby creating a fully integrated learning environment.”
Innoventures Education has approximately 7,500 students in schools and nurseries from over 100 countries, ranging in age from 45 days to 18 years. Around 1,250 staff and over 7,500 students at five of its foreign schools benefit from the solution, which includes an updated wired and wireless network infrastructure to support a fully integrated digital learning environment.
Dubai International Academy, Collegiate International School, Raffles International School, and Raffles World Academy in Dubai and nine Raffles Early Learning Centres are all run by Innoventures Education.
“From a technology perspective, it is our mission to provide a secured network that enables our students to access various learning systems that enhance the learning experience. A strong network is a backbone of IT services and is an essential requirement in today’s world,” explains Ms. Bhojani.
“While we did our due diligence and evaluated other vendors which were also Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders, we were especially impressed by Aruba’s diverse range of enhanced Network Access Control (NAC) solutions and security orchestration with ClearPass, as well as its broad range of wireless access points and switches unified in a coherent design,” adds Ms. Bhojani.
As a long-time Aruba customer, the Innoventures Education Group’s schools were among the first in the UAE to adopt an end-to-end Aruba network architecture, providing a state-of-the-art IT environment with Hewlett Packard and HP desktops, laptops, and printing equipment.
The group needed to contemplate a network infrastructure refresh due to the rapid digitization of the education sector. Aruba continued to make a compelling case for the Group to expand on its long-term success and tried-and-true infrastructure.
“Aruba enables students and teachers to securely access Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams and another popular teaching, learning and collaboration applications without experiencing delays, jitter, or dropped connections,” says Ms. Bhojani.
Thanks to the installation of over 1,000 APs, the Innoventures Education schools were able to achieve 100 percent coverage across each of their school campuses without any blind spots after implementing Aruba’s wired and wireless networking solutions. Because over 10,000 devices connect to the network on average from throughout the Group’s five campuses, performance and reliability are critical for seamless operations.
The range of digital gadgets, as well as their individualised nature, indicates that the Innoventures Education Group’s staff and students would want to use their own devices for studying and enjoyment in a highly linked environment. Standard laptops and tablets are not only expensive, but they also appear to be obsolete.
“All our campuses now support BYOD and thanks to Aruba’s zero trust architecture, all our mission-critical cloud applications – our student management system, library management system, e-assessments, and learning management system – are seamlessly and securely accessible to relevant stakeholders,” adds Ms. Bhojani.
Aruba ClearPass has proved instrumental in enabling secure BYOD for workers and students. QuickConnect, Policy Manager, OnGuard, and Guest features in the solution ensure that both personal and institution-owned devices can quickly connect to the network while also ensuring that they meet pre-defined configuration and security criteria and that only relevant resources are accessible based on predefined roles.
“Our mission is to leverage technologies that work together cohesively to augment the overall experience that students have at our schools. Aruba’s network ensures these solutions operate efficiently and effectively which translates to intuitive and truly world-class experiences,” says Ms. Bhojani.
The new network infrastructure will handle a wide range of devices, including PCs, laptops, projectors, interactive display panels, iPads, CCTV systems, signage TVs, and attendance and access control systems, as part of the Group’s continuous digitalisation drive.
With operations spread across five school campuses, simplified, centralised management of the entire network – made possible by the implementation of Aruba’s 7200 series controllers – has been tremendously beneficial to Innoventures Education’s IT team. “Aruba facilitates automation of previously manual processes, which leads to the smooth running of our network. This also simplifies operations and reduces costs and risks,” explains Ms. Bhojani.
“Because of the considerable reduction in connectivity-related support tickets, and the significantly improved time to resolution, we now require fewer resources for network management. We expect this to result in savings of 50% over three years,” she adds.
It isn’t just the Aruba technology that has impressed Innoventures Education. “We find the team to be customer-centric. Their paradigm isn’t just the implementation of devices, but rather, to address their customers’ challenges and provide effective solutions,” says Ms. Bhojani.
“While ensuring great student experiences and supporting student success is a primary focus, ensuring best IT experiences is important too, especially in today’s campus where device proliferation and security concerns require detailed visibility and management of the network. We are very happy to have collaborated with Innoventures Education in their digital transformation journey and look forward to enlarging our engagement with the institution in the future,” says Jacob Chacko, Regional Director – Middle East, Saudi & South Africa at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
