KACST gains from high-tech connectivity

With a need to create a modern, future-proof network infrastructure to support bandwidth-intensive research applications and data sharing across global universities and research agencies — such as the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) and the UNESCO (the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) — King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), has turned to Brocade to deliver a state-of-the-art network infrastructure comprising high-performance campus networking and load balancing solutions.
Hasan Alhowimel, assistant of IT directory and network engineer at KACST, said: “Factors such as an increasing number of employees and deployment of bandwidth-intensive applications-like Oracle ERP, wireless applications as well as external services (to share data with international agencies) led to tremendous strain on the underlying infrastructure.”
He added: “We had plans to go wireless to increase user productivity, but were being held back by the limitations of a network that could not deliver the kind of performance we required. The need for a more stable, high-performance network was becoming increasingly obvious to us, and we knew that the success of a number of our future initiatives would depend on a strong and reliable foundation.”
The new Brocade campus network environment, deployed by Brocade’s local partner Nesma Advanced Technology, spans 16 buildings including the KACST headquarters, which houses the institution’s data center.
The benefits of the Brocade FastIron SX switches, with industry-leading Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology, were immediately realized.
“We found that the Brocade PoE solution not only reduced the cost of cabling, but also greatly simplified integration of our security camera and fingerprint attendance systems,” said Alhowimel.
As part of the wider network upgrade, the Brocade ADX Series of application delivery switches allowed KACST to achieve significant performance benefits from its web portal.