The Central University of Technology (CUT), a leading higher education institution based in South Africa’s Free State province, has successfully rolled out phase one of its three-year network and Wi-Fi infrastructure upgrade, an important step in the university’s digital transformation journey.
The project is being completed with Datacentrix, a leading hybrid IT systems integrator and managed services provider and HEITSA Premier Corporate Partner, in proud partnership with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
Says Busi Matube, CUT’s ICT Director and Chief Digital Officer: “The driving force behind this infrastructure upgrade is our digital transformation strategy, with the aim of improving our connectivity efficiencies and speed, and our use of 4IR technologies. This will allow us to better leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) for other projects we have in place, such as smart buildings and a VR environment for our engineering students.”
CUT’s existing infrastructure was failing to meet the needs of students and staff, with connectivity issues becoming a sore point. According to Lucky Matjelo, Deputy Director: ICT Infrastructure Services at CUT, technology had changed and advanced, and the previous solution was under increasing pressure.
“With around 22,000 staff and students on campus, each with a minimum of two devices apiece and expectations of being able to connect wirelessly around the campus, connection speed had become an issue for us.”
CUT decided that a network and Wi-Fi infrastructure upgrade was critical for the university to meet its digital transformation objective of building a smart campus.
The new wireless network infrastructure would ensure the connectedness of students and staff to digital resources both internal and external to the network, as well as providing CUT with the ability to relay data from smart buildings’ backend systems for analysis and reporting, and to provide a connected access control system for a more secure campus.
Benefits experienced by CUT from the rollout thus far include the improvement of Wi-Fi connectivity issues in high-traffic areas, like the library and labs, where previously students had experienced serious connectivity challenges due to low Wi-Fi signal. These signal drop-outs have stopped completely since Datacentrix began the project, reports Matube.
“There has also been greater visibility on the network, as well as more opportunity to engage with users to understand and solve challenges.”
Matube says: “Datacentrix has delivered far beyond the set-up of our equipment, and has provided excellent after-sales support to CUT’s small IT team, augmenting the skills we have available internally. Our Datacentrix contacts are always available and the experience with them has been excellent.”
For more information, contact Francois Jacobs on +27 (0) 83 602 5857, [email protected], or visit www.datacentrix.co.za
(left to right) Henry Denner, Account Manager: Commercial at Datacentrix; Craig Dass, Business Development Manager at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company; and Francois Jacobs, Sales Manager: Commercial at Datacentrix