Anderson County School District Deploys Enterasys OneFabric Solutions to Support BYOD Program

ANDOVER, Mass., May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterasys Networks, a Siemens Enterprise Communications Company, announced today that that Anderson County School District in Kentucky has deployed Enterasys OneFabric BYOD solutions to provide its 3,800 students and 500 employees with reliable and secure wireless access.

One of the key initiatives at the Anderson School District is to transform the student academic experience while driving economic and IT efficiencies. The school district decided to provide choice and flexibility to the student community to allow them to access academic information through their own laptops, tablets and smartphones. Anderson School District needed to implement a wireless network that could provide complete visibility and automated management in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment to support its 1:1 technology learning initiative, through which each student has access to a wireless communication device.

"Since it would be too cost-prohibitive to purchase wireless devices for each of our students, and 80 percent of our students have devices they can use, the best solution was to upgrade our wireless infrastructure and allow students and faculty to bring their own devices," said Bret Foster, CIO for Anderson County School District. "By allowing students to bring their own wireless devices, we can harness the resources students already have, and are comfortable using, to provide an enhanced learning experience."

Enterasys was chosen for its simplicity and ability to provide deep visibility and control to IT to enable successful deployment of BYOD projects on a large scale. The OneFabric architecture enables the school district to gain end-to-end visibility and provide efficient provisioning of academic applications to consistently deliver the best student and staff experience. In addition, Enterasys' award-winning customer care and support services made it an easy choice for the school district.

"We feel very confident in our network and if there's any issues, Enterasys is there to help us figure it out within hours – not days or weeks – but hours," said Foster. "With this latest wireless LAN upgrade, I knew I was investing in a quality product and company when we chose Enterasys. The value-add provided by Enterasys' service made it impossible for a competitor to come into my school district."

Anderson School District's upgrade includes Enterasys Wireless, as well as several Enterasys switches (Enterasys S-Series, Enterasys B-Series), wireless access points for each classroom, and Enterasys Mobile IAM for secure, policy-based administration.

Central to success of Anderson School District's wireless upgrade is the NAC's Authentication Gateway, as this feature marries the student's device with their active directory profile. This level of control provides administration with complete visibility into when students log into the network and how students are using their devices.

"School districts like Anderson County are under constant pressure to deliver high value with tight budgets," said Ram Appalaraju, vice president of marketing, Enterasys. "Our OneFabric architecture is specifically designed to meet the demanding needs of today's K-12 market with a solution that can easily scale to meet BYOD demand and provide the built-in visibility to ensure educational applications deliver the best experience possible."

"A district requirement is for us to track and monitor the usage of personally owned devices on network. Enterasys Mobile IAM has allowed us to track, monitor and report on how the network is being used," said Foster. "Without this feature, it would have been impossible for us to deploy a wireless initiative,"

Since the wireless network upgrade in August, Anderson County District has had 2,000 new devices register on their network, with new devices being added every day.

"Compared to where we were a year ago, we've cut the student to device ratio in half. Students and teachers are excited about the opportunities these devices bring to the educational experience," said Foster. "As a result, learning with any device can happen anytime and anywhere on our campus."

Resources

• Enterasys OneFabric BYOD solutions webpage
• Enterasys Solutions for K-12 webpage
• Enterasys Social Media newsroom
• Anderson County Schools Case Study

About Enterasys Networks and Siemens Enterprise Communications
Siemens Enterprise Communications is a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications, including voice, network infrastructure and security solutions that use open, standards-based unified communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience. This award-winning "Open Communications" approach enables organizations to improve productivity and reduce costs through easy-to-deploy solutions that work within existing IT environments, delivering operational efficiencies. It is the foundation for the company's OpenPath® commitment that enables customers to mitigate risk and cost-effectively adopt unified communications. Jointly owned by The Gores Group and Siemens AG, Siemens Enterprise Communications includes Cycos and Enterasys Networks. For more information about Siemens Enterprise Communications or Enterasys please visit www.siemens-enterprise.com or www.enterasys.com.

SOURCE Enterasys Networks