International School Carinthia (ISC) Velden

Key stats

• 450 network users and over 800 devices
• 30 MR access points
• 2 MX SD-WAN appliances

Overview

The International School Carinthia (ISC) Velden in Austria serves a student population of over 380 students representing 41 nationalities and speaking 34 languages. The modern campus, located in the market town of Velden with a backdrop of the picturesque Wörthersee Lake, consists of two buildings containing 21 classrooms, two gyms, a lab, library, media center, and music room.

Priding itself as a technology-forward environment, ISC Velden has embarked on a journey toward the future of education—a future built on connectivity, collaboration, and accessibility through reliable digital learning.

ISC is striving to be a leader in technology-based education, and the Meraki platform works hand-in-hand with that goal.

James Brightman

Former Director of ISC

Challenge

With approximately 450 network users connecting over 800 devices on a daily basis, an exceptional network is vital for ISC’s success in delivering an elevated digital learning experience.
Both students and staff rely on connectivity for their daily learning, online collaboration, and communication. The school took a learning-by-doing approach and discovered their existing network wasn’t “future ready.” Instead, it was leading to a variety of poor experiences, both from students voicing concern over dropped Wi-Fi as well as significant IT service costs due to the lack of adaptability and flexibility of the network.
ISC desperately needed a technology partner that could provide a solution to address connectivity and IT management needs, especially with the school’s BYOD (bring your own device) policy that required an added layer of device management, access, and visibility. They needed a network that was equally reliable, stable, and flexible to support all connected devices while allowing for automated updates. Security and network health were also top of mind when finding the right partner, with both students and parents contributing and communicating on a variety of school-related websites and applications.

Solution

James Brightman, former Director of ISC, was “very thankful” when the school’s IT provider recommended Meraki as a modern, flexible answer to their connectivity, security, and adaptability woes.

In their journey toward award-winning digital learning, the ISC technology team agreed a cloud-managed architecture could further facilitate their mission as it allows for the agility and flexibility they had previously been lacking. The cloud-managed nature of the Meraki platform allows for network-wide visibility, which leads to a drastic reduction in reactive troubleshooting and an increase in predictive network management, giving the school’s IT team vital time back. Another benefit: with Meraki, the ISC IT team has visibility into the status of each technology solution through one centralized “accessible from anywhere” dashboard.

ISC’s school network now consists of 30 Meraki MR access points, three MS switches, and two MX SD-WAN appliances, all of which address not only the connectivity issues the school had been experiencing but their security fears as well. The MX SD-WAN allows ISC to control how traffic is directed and prioritized across multiple uplinks while enabling the school’s network to immediately and intelligently adapt to changing performance conditions.

Results

Technology is a tool to help students learn, and when it’s running smoothly without more dedicated time from our side, we are able to focus on what our true job is: providing a 21st century educational program to our kids.

James Brightman

Former Director of ISC

Let’s take a step back to highlight what a future-ready learning environment actually looks like. A future-ready classroom is one without walls, one that provides equitable connectivity, secure digital experiences, and an emphasis on a collaboration from anywhere approach.

Lena Aspmair, a student at ISC, describes digitalization in her school as a way to “collaborate faster and more efficiently with others.” Through the partnership with Meraki and the subsequent improved connectivity, she goes on to note, “we can collaborate so much more easily with our classmates and our teachers—and [that collaboration] prepares us for life after school.”

Because of the cloud-managed nature of Meraki solutions, the students aren’t the only ones benefiting from the results of the partnership. Since the system can be managed remotely via the Meraki dashboard, the school was able to realize cost savings since they don’t need engineers on-site to troubleshoot or implement updates. In addition, there has been a significant reduction in service tickets, which means that staff can focus on their true mission: continuing to provide a future-ready approach to learning for their students.