The Project:
The Sparrow Farm Infants and Junior schools amalgamated to form Sparrow Farm Primary School in January 2021. Simpli-Fi had been providing a managed WiFi service to the independent schools for the past nine years, working in partnership with Platinum ICT. Both schools were using a different WiFi network and were operating as two separate teams. Simpli-Fi worked with Platinum ICT to manage the merger of the WiFi network between the two schools.
Challenges:
The junior school had already updated their WiFi network, but the infant school was using a legacy system. This meant that the schools were running two separate wireless networks, using different hardware solutions. We therefore needed to make adjustments to the overall network, and link the two schools by joining the networks to one domain.
The nature of the work meant that the network was offline during the installation so although the work was completed during half term, there was pressure on the team to minimise the down time on the IT network across the sites and complete the work before the school reopened.
The Solution:
The schools were previously using different systems, with the Infant school using a legacy HP Aruba WiFi network and the Junior school a new Ruckus WiFi network. As it was not technically efficient for the newly amalgamated school to use different systems, we recommended an upgrade to the Ruckus system for the former Infant school site. This ensured the best possible wireless service across the campus.
Simpli-Fi will now provide a managed WiFi service to the primary school within a new three year contract.
The Result:
“Having worked with Simpli-Fi for over eight years, we have complete trust in their ability to deliver their service on time and on budget. This project was no exception, the work to amalgamate the two networks was achieved seamlessly, meaning that we experienced minimal interruption to our teaching and learning.”
Sparrow Farm Primary School
