Leading Private Research and Health
Organization Taps Aruba to Connect Users in 200 Buildings Across 11
Million Square Feet
Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) today announced that the
University of Miami, a private research institution and the
top-ranked school in Florida, and its health system,
UHealth-University of Miami Health System, have selected Aruba for
an organization-wide wireless network upgrade covering 200
buildings and 11 million square feet of the University’s three main
campuses, as well as UHealth’s three hospitals and two dozen
outpatient facilities. With the Aruba infrastructure, the
University can address the substantial increase in mobile devices
within its varied academic, research, residential and clinical care
environments on a single, high-performing network.
With its new Aruba Networks wireless
infrastructure, the University of Miami and its UHealth- University
of Miami Health System addresses the connectivity needs of more
than 15,000 students on its campus as well as those of its
fast-growing medical center. (Photo: Business Wire)
With its large, multi-location campus serving more than 15,000
students, as well as a fast-growing medical center that includes 40
buildings across 72 acres, the organization’s primary network
challenge was to satisfy all of the connectivity needs of these
differing facilities. Delivering organization-wide access and
mobility were key objectives, as was the ability to handle an
increasing density of mobile and wireless medical devices and,
eventually, support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. To
satisfy the needs of all their users who are increasingly
representative of #GenMobile, the new generation of mobile worker
defined by their preference for mobility, the organization knew its
aging infrastructure needed an upgrade.
The University embarked on a thorough evaluation of solutions
from its incumbent vendor, as well as several challengers,
including Aruba. According to Stewart Seruya, Assistant Vice
President and Chief Network Officer for Information Technology,
University of Miami, the evaluation was led by a broad mix of the
institution’s decision-makers including the hospital and research
teams, all of whom concluded that Aruba was the best solution to
meet their needs.
“We completed multiple pilots in high concentration areas with
students, as well as dense areas on our Medical campus, and the
Aruba access points were clearly the best-performing in these high
density situations,” said Seruya. “The Aruba APs handled the
different hand-off scenarios we posed – particularly in our medical
environment where there are lots of wireless devices being used by
the nurses, staff, and physicians – and they passed all of our
stress tests. At the end of the evaluation, our decision to go with
Aruba was straightforward.”
The organization has deployed Aruba mobility controllers, the
Aruba 130 Series APs and the AirWave Network Management system. To
date, the institution has installed approximately 2,300 Aruba APs,
with another 4,000 planned over the next twelve months. They are
also in the process of configuring Aruba’s ClearPass Access
Management System; the original intent was to use ClearPass to
provide guest access, but according to Seruya, the University has
been impressed with ClearPass’s advanced features and functionality
and plans to use it to enable BYOD, moving forward.
The University of Miami/UHealth has begun a rigorous, phased
deployment schedule that will eventually result in the Aruba
infrastructure covering its entire campus and medical facilities.
Currently, the main University buildings, hospitals, and specialty
practices are all outfitted with the new gear and over the summer
of 2014, the key residential colleges will be upgraded. The
University expects 50% of the upgrade to be completed by the end of
the summer, with the remaining areas covered in phases over the
next two years. In addition, the organization has just announced
plans to open a new, 200,000-square-foot outpatient facility that
will be upgraded with Aruba infrastructure. The institution will
also provide wireless network coverage for major new buildings on
campus including a School of Music, a Marine School, and a unique
research and science facility that incorporates three stories of
water to study weather patterns and storm impact.
“Mobility is crucial for all of our institution’s academic and
medical staff, students, and patients, and strategic to the success
of the University and UHealth,” said Brad Rohrer, Associate Vice
President and Deputy CIO for Information Technology, University of
Miami. “We suspect that more than 25,000 devices are connecting to
our network daily and we’ve seen peaks as high as 18,000 devices
simultaneously on the network. The expectation is to keep all of
these users connected reliably and without disruption, anytime and
anywhere across the entire organization. The infrastructure is
absolutely critical in making this happen.”
Rohrer noted that in both the academic and medical environments,
the institution is relying more heavily upon the wireless network.
“We want to get to the point where it doesn’t matter what type of
device people are using, as long as they can do their job. The
network will support whatever devices are being used and will
enable easy, secure access for everyone.”
Future plans for the academic environment revolve primarily
around BYOD, where the University wants to allow students, faculty,
and staff to self-configure their personal devices to the network
without IT involvement, while maintaining security and HIPAA
requirements.
For the medical environment, one of UHealth’s key goals is to
implement Electronic Medical Records (EMR); the wireless
infrastructure is central to enabling EMR, as it will allow the
various wireless medical devices to communicate.
The organization is also looking to roll out 802.11ac in the
near future, which will help it keep pace with the number and types
of devices being used in both the academic and medical facilities.
Rohrer says he expects that about 40% of the 4,000 additional APs
that they will deploy in the next year will be 802.11ac APs.
Additional plans for the future include Microsoft Lync for Unified
Communications, as the institution believes that its new wireless
infrastructure will enable it to move away from expensive
investments in telecommunications and voice products.
Said Rohrer, “We’ve had all of these differing needs that we had
to consider as we designed our network, and with Aruba, we’ve been
able to bring them all together into a single network that serves
all of our users. As we move forward, I’m certain that we’ll
continue to see more users, more devices and applications and,
therefore, more challenges. We feel confident that our new Aruba
infrastructure will help us face these challenges head on.”
About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network
access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company designs and
delivers Mobility-Defined Networks that empower IT departments and
#GenMobile, a new generation of tech-savvy users who rely on their
mobile devices for every aspect of work and personal communication.
To create a mobility experience that #GenMobile and IT can rely
upon, Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks™ automate infrastructure-wide
performance optimization and trigger security actions that used to
require manual IT intervention. The results are dramatically
improved productivity and lower operational costs.
Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in
Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas,
Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions. To learn
more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time
news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the
latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit
Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.
© 2014 Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks’ trademarks include
Aruba Networks®, Aruba The Mobile Edge Company® (stylized), Aruba
Mobility-Defined Networks™, Aruba Mobility Management System®,
People Move Networks Must Follow®, Mobile Edge Architecture®,
RFProtect®, Green Island®, ETips®, ClientMatchTM, Virtual Intranet
AccessTM, ClearPass Access Management SystemsTM, Aruba InstantTM,
ArubaOSTM, xSecTM, ServiceEdgeTM, Aruba ClearPass Access Management
SystemTM, AirmeshTM, AirWaveTM, Aruba CentralTM, and “ARUBA@WORKTM.
All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available:
http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20140729005023/en/
Aruba Networks, Inc.Pavel Radda, +1-408-419-0294Director of
Corporate Communicationspradda@arubanetworks.comorLSH
Communications for Aruba NetworksLori Hultin,
+1-818-879-4651Principallhultin@arubanetworks.com