Customer Stories

Northern Arizona University

Date : 2/1/2011
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Impulse Point has exceeded my expectations. I’ve worked with a lot of vendors, and I’m hard to please. But I’ve been very, very happy, not only with the strategic design of this solution, but also with the deployment and the response that we get anytime we need help. The combination of SafeConnect software on Dell hardware is performing extremely well for us.

John Campbell, Director of Academic Computing, Northern Arizona University, United States

Challenge
Previously, Northern Arizona University relied on Cisco® Clean Access (CCA) for network security in its residential housing. Unfortunately, the solution was updated only a few times a year, which meant that students using brand-new operating systems had to be exempted — creating a significant security gap and undesirable end-user experiences. In addition, because the solution ran on 21 separate servers and because a failure brought down the entire wireless network for a residence hall due to its in-line network design, it resulted in frequent downtime for students and inefficient administration and maintenance for IT staff. NAU needed a network access control (NAC) solution that provided enhanced ease of use for the management team and for students as well.
Solution
The university deployed SafeConnect™ from Dell Preferred Partner Impulse Point, running on-site on three Dell PowerEdge™ servers. Impulse Point manages the solution. Frequent updates to SafeConnect close security gaps, and because the solution fails open, an issue with a single server no longer shuts down network access to students. Northern Arizona University has simultaneously doubled its NAC capacity and greatly reduced the NAC administration requirements for its IT staff.
Benefits
• Unplanned solution downtime eliminated (vs. 10 hours/month downtime previously)
• 100 percent availability of Dell servers since deployment
• 97 percent reduction in wait time for support of new software and devices
• 50 hours/month reclaimed for IT staff on administration of NAC solution
• Early-morning system updates offloaded from internal IT staff to managed service provider
• 20-30 hours/week reclaimed for student workers through improved solution design
• 50 percent reduction in NAC-related help desk calls during move-in week
• 7-fold reduction in number of servers running NAC solution (3 vs. 21)
• 2-fold increase in university’s NAC capacity
• 86 percent reduction in power and cooling consumption
• $1,000/year reduction in spending on third-party software license fees
• Vastly improved response time to support calls with increased collaboration