Juniper consolidates networking infrastructure for XIM

The Xavier Institute of Management (XIM)—the fourth largest business schools in east India is upgrading its networking infrastructure to support its growth plans.

Background:

The institute shares a 10 kilometer fiber optic networking infrastructure with six other campuses spread across the 40-acre big Xavier University, Bhubaneswar (XUB). Overall, the infrastructure supported by an HP server, supports more than 400 telephone extensions, 1,000 nodes and an ERP software.

The goal:

XIM has ambitious plans to go digital.

"Come June and we are planning to provide high definition digital content including videos, conduct trainings and even exams online. As a pilot, we are providing a feature Xavier my Room (XmR), which is a virtual room that allows the faculty and the students to access online videos and content by using their secure IPs," notes Umesh Hodeghatta Rao, Faculty, Information Systems, XIM.

“Our ultimate goal is to create a centrally controlled architecture, and consolidate all the IT backend on a central server, in a central data center.” -Umesh Hodeghatta Rao, Faculty, Information Systems, XIM

“Our ultimate goal is to create a centrally controlled architecture, and consolidate all the IT backend on a central server, in a central data center,” he says.

The HP servers are already supporting our virtualization software; XIM will start porting different applications on the IT architecture.

Challenges:

One of the major challenges XIM was facing was consolidation of the networking infrastructure, said Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering, India & Saarc, Juniper Networks.

Educational institutes rely on local vendors and partners for the implementation and support. The major challenge in this case is scalability as these vendors are not equipped to unify the disparate systems, consolidate them, and make them scalable.” -Sajan Paul Director, Systems Engineering, India & Saarc, Juniper Networks

In the education vertical, many institutes build adhoc networks because networking is a cost center for them. Therefore, they rely on local vendors and partners for the implementation and support. The major challenge in this case is scalability as these vendors are not equipped to unify the disparate systems, consolidate them, and make them scalable.

The solution and support:

Paul says that IBM, the company’s systems integration partner in this project, installed and consolidated a high-speed fiber network on MetaFabric, Juniper’s networking architecture that make it easier for organizations to move applications and data not only around a data center but between different data centers.

“Today the architecture support 10 Gig and 40 Gig of speed, but it is future ready and will 100 Gig and 400 Gig,” he adds.

As a part of the support contract, IBM will maintain the infrastructure for the first three years.

Business outcomes: 

The new installation supports Rao’s initiative of a secure Wi-Fi campus and also offers predictability and performance to operate mission critical applications on the network, thereby reducing operational costs.

Rao informs that XIM has ambitious plans for the future; it wants to enroll around 10,000 students in the next 10 years, and is confident that the new infrastructure support would support his endeavour.