27 March 2024
The Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University has benefited from a huge uplift in the scope of its internet access and services for students and international visitors with a new AI-driven Local Area Network delivered by The Networking People (TNP)..png?lu=443)
TNP recommended the Juniper Mist system to replace the existing outdated network and helped the college develop plans for a complete refresh that has transformed the user experience for internet access and functionality and reduced operational costs.
The Blavatnik School of Government (BSG) at Oxford University was formed in 2010 to build a better led, served, and governed world and is committed to improving the quality of government and policymaking worldwide. It required a next-gen network capable of delivering the connectivity for international events and enabling its large AV network which had outgrown the previous infrastructure.
“Great WiFi is increasingly a vital part of the University experience and simply being connected was no longer good enough for BSG. With an uptake in the number of user devices and increasing digitisation of services BSG needed more performance from the network,” said TNP account director George Knowles.
A recent service review of the new LAN infrastructure reported huge improvements in the simplicity and reliability of WiFi that was easier to use with more stable and consistent performance. There was enhanced ability to send video over IP, enabling new AV kit to make most of the new network, and greater flexibility with event setup across lecture rooms, and in the development of online events.
“We can have anything between 200 and a thousand people attending events at the college, together with worldwide on-line audiences for simultaneous live transmission for high profile individuals such as Hilary Clinton who visited recently,” said a Blavatnik School of Government spokesperson. “We cannot afford to have any blips in how the IT network operates because that in turn reflects on the reputation of the college itself. But the new network has been exemplary in delivering everything we need; now with TNP we are continuing to develop how we can extract maximum advantage. Oxford University has a huge legacy of academic excellence and we are now at the forefront of delivering excellence in our networking visibility, capacity and connectivity through investment in the new system.”
BSG operates a small network team which received Juniper peer-led training, and part of the original brief was leveraging technology and automation to ease the operational burden. The Juniper Mist system uses Artificial Intelligence that enables self-healing technology, reducing operational support from internal teams, and the ongoing cost of the system. TNP had originally proposed a five-year network support agreement, but this was reduced to 12 months taking into account the system performance and effectiveness of the AI technology.
TNP assisted BSG is scoping out the requirements for the new LAN infrastructure and won the contract in an open tender. Work began on creating the new system in September 2022. The need for a complete refresh meant that none of the previous assets remained, but TNP needed to ensure continuity of WiFi service for BSG, which often meant working out of hours and during term breaks. The new system went live in August 2023.
