Network Infrastructure Solutions

This Arizona unified school is amongst scenic treasures, like the Grand Canyon. The district serves a thriving town of nearly 9,000 residents with a community of educators and learners who direct collective actions and resources towards the unique learning needs of every child.

Challenge

This Northern Arizona unified school district is geographically located over one hundred miles from the nearest major city. Their core network hardware was over 10-years old and no longer eligible for support from the manufacturer. Due to capital constraints, the district had been unable to upgrade the core; therefore, they relied on a third party to provide “break-fix” support on an as-needed basis.

The district sought assistance with designing a core network architecture which would be easy to manage and re-instated their manufacturer support. Additionally, they needed to execute the project immediately while having the ability to finance the expense over an extended period.

Solution

VectorUSA engineered and deployed a cloud-based Cisco Meraki core network to replace the legacy, “end-of-life” environment across all four schools in the district. By working with Cisco capital, we were able to finance the project for the district over a five-year span, while executing on the project immediately.

With the period of performance nearing the beginning of the Fall semester, it was critical that the cutover did not create noticeable downtime. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the district was heavily reliant on the network being stable to effectively teach its students remotely.

Our professional services team developed and utilized a detail cutover plan so that the district was able to replace its core network without interfering with the student’s learning experience.

Benefits

The deployment of the new Meraki core meant the district was back under a manufacturer support agreement, critical to receive incident response as well as regular security patch updates.

The entire network is cloud-managed through a single dashboard. For a district with limited IT resources, this significantly reduces the time required to make changes to the network across all four locations.

The multi-year financing of the upgrade allowed the district to reserve their capital budget for other projects or emergency expenses.