New College Durham (NCD) is a mixed economy institution, offering courses and programmes of study across a wide range of vocational areas. A campus regeneration project was completed in 2005, and NCD recognised the need for a completely new integrated and manageable ICT infrastructure to improve learning and teaching experiences at the College. There was also a need to reduce ongoing infrastructure costs and improve the existing CCTV surveillance system.
NCD wished to increase the use of simulations and multimedia content as well as provide email, Internet access, and business relevant software tools to all students. In addition, NCD wanted to integrate learning delivery with national and regional Student Information Systems. To help them with this challenge, NCD turned to networking specialist Telindus.
The solution
Ian Walton, New College Durham’s Director of Finance & Corporate Services, commented, “Telindus recommended the integration of voice, data and video surveillance onto a single network and we felt they were the best company to offer us this complete solution. This was a complete leap forward in technology for us, but we trusted them to deliver the right network infrastructure for our needs because we knew they had strong systems integration experience and skills.”
Telindus implemented a new converged infrastructure to run alongside and integrate with the existing disparate voice, data, storage and surveillance networks. The system has given the College the capacity to connect all services over IP, enabling staff and students to access to their IT information 24/7 wherever they may be on campus.
The benefits
For staff, the new infrastructure has enabled a mobile working environment in which they do not have to return to their offices repeatedly to download material. They are able to access teaching aids from any location and instantly link to new equipment, such as interactive whiteboards, in the renovated classrooms. The initial deployment of a unified messaging system has saved staff huge amounts of time – allowing them to spend more time teaching rather than administrating.
On the student side, security has been increased with the introduction of student and staff ID cards, and an integrated IP-based CCTV surveillance system. The new CCTV system has already had a marked effect, reducing theft and vandalism by 64 per cent.
Since the completion of the project, the College has saved almost £150,000 in cabling, ongoing maintenance and the reduction in fixed PCs. The internal management of the new IP CCTV and VoIP systems has alone reduced expenditure by £40,000. NCD now has the capability to upgrade all its online security measures in the future, such as email and Internet monitoring, firewalls and network authentication in order to improve information security.
© 2004 Tim Crocker
