Alcatel-Lucent Improves Alcorn State University's Communications Infrastructure

As college campuses across the world aim to keep up with the changes in communication, some decide it’s best to replace their old network infrastructure. One that made the decision to upgrade was Alcorn State University in Mississippi, which turned to Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) to replace its aged network infrastructure and telephone equipment.

 Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) stepped in, and after careful determining the university’s requirements, installed a new configuration of over 350 switches to provide Alcorn State with a next generation IP Telephony solution to accommodate the growing needs of the entire campus and all of its various stakeholders. Included among those switches are the:

• Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6850 and 6855 series
• Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9700 Modular LAN Switch
• OmniVIsta 2500 Network Management System
• OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server

The Alcatel-Lucent team worked together with the staff of the Alcorn State, determining exactly what it needed and what the cost would be. The quote they received contained everything that the university staff needed to know, allowing them to make a decision and execute the transformation.

As a result, Alcorn State feels it has found itself with a reliable solution that improved the network and communications across the campus. The products are configured to match requirements in any specific location, with easy to use and improved functionality that give users the best capabilities possible. The network is now managed from a centralized location for better efficiency, proactively catching problems before they become an issue. It also improves its suite of online capabilities, providing a better network for its students to enjoy.

“We can do so much with these devices,” says Desmond Stewart, Alcorn’s Enterprise Architect. “One especially useful feature is the ability to search the University’s directory from your own handset; that’s huge for us. When the phone-based directory access capability became available the workload on our sole onsite operator decreased dramatically. Our users have become a lot more self-sufficient and this has enabled us to become more efficient ourselves.”

The various improvements have had a tremendous impact already for students and faculty alike. With the average college student now armed with six network aware devices, and with the trend for the need for ubiquitous high-speed networking anywhere on the campus—integrating fixed and mobile capabilities along with providing next generation capabilities like unified communications, Alcorn State serves as a great example of the trend for institutions of higher learning putting in the infrastructure they need not only to provide what is needed to fulfill their academic mission, but is also future-ready and gives them a competitive advantage in a very competitive education market. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXP. Follow us on Twitter.