Leading Liberal Arts College to Upgrade Entire Campus Network
Based on NetScout Performance Intelligence
WESTFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 2007--NetScout(R)
Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of network and
application performance management solutions, today announced that
Bates College has selected NetScout's nGenius(R) Solution to drive a
ten-year, campus-wide network upgrade. The prestigious liberal arts
college chose the nGenius Solution for its ability to deliver the
precise and conclusive operational intelligence necessary to ensure
the performance of critical applications, redistribute bandwidth load
and prepare its existing network for a major campus-wide upgrade.
"Upgrading the entire campus, all 87 buildings, is a multi-year
project," said Jim Bauer, director of network and infrastructure, who
heads up Bates' six-person network team. "As we build out a more
complex core network, we need more sophisticated monitoring tools.
NetScout's nGenius solution is key for us--every IT decision we make
needs to be based upon solid evidence. We have to know what we're
dealing with every step of the way, and NetScout gives us that
visibility."
The college's critical traffic includes two Web-based applications
used widely by institutions of higher learning: administrative suite
Banner by Sungard and Blackboard's e-learning package WebCT. With the
nGenius Solution, Bates is able to track activity and response times
as well as ensure these important applications operate harmoniously
with other critical applications.
A common issue facing colleges of Bates' size and larger is
identifying the users who are consuming the majority of the
organization's overall bandwidth. The college uses the nGenius
Solution to identify these users and then to analyze how each user is
consuming the bandwidth. Identifying and analyzing this information is
extremely important in the open environment of a college campus. A
student may have a virus, or may not realize they are running their
own improperly configured wireless access point.
"With the nGenius Solution we can see a spike, drill down and find
out who is doing what on the network," added Bauer. "NetScout allows
us to obtain the information we need to find the responsible party and
take the appropriate action."
The nGenius Solution is able to identify which nodes handle which
traffic - allowing Bates to correct the load balance based on that
information.
Bates is currently constructing a second data center for built-in
redundancy and is laying new fiber in the ground to bring the college
from one Gigabyte to ten Gigabyte capacity. In the future, Bates plans
to leverage the nGenius Solution to demonstrate the need for bandwidth
upgrades, add voice-over-IP (VoIP) campus-wide and perhaps even give
students the ability to see a 'bandwidth speedometer' to understand
link utilization.
"We have colleagues at other schools who have been crippled
because they don't have tools like the nGenius Solution," said Bauer.
"Without the ability to go in and find out what's happening on the
network, they've had parts of their networks down for a week at a
time. The nGenius Solution allows us to be proactive--to stay ahead of
the curve."
"Institutions of higher learning face unique network management
challenges," says John Downing, NetScout's vice president of worldwide
sales. "They oversee some of the most open networks and serve
demanding users. The nGenius Solution allows colleges and universities
to identify the new applications that can appear on a campus overnight
and identify anomalous traffic patterns that could spell trouble for
the mission-critical applications students and professors depend
upon."
About NetScout Systems
NetScout Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTCT) is a market leader and
pioneer of integrated network and application performance management
products and solutions that assure critical business services across
the enterprise. More than 3200 organizations worldwide have deployed
NetScout's nGenius(R) Performance Management System to increase their
return on infrastructure investments by optimizing the performance of
networks and applications according to business priorities. NetScout
is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts and has offices worldwide.
Further information is available at http://www.netscout.com.
(C)2007 NetScout Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. NetScout and
the NetScout logo, nGenius, and Quantiva are registered trademarks of
NetScout Systems, Inc. The CDM logo, MasterCare, the MasterCare logo
and Progressive Analytics are trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc.
Other brands, product names and trademarks are property of their
respective owners. NetScout reserves the right, at its sole
discretion, to make changes at any time in its technical information
and specifications, and service and support programs.
CONTACT: NetScout Systems, Inc.
Christine Johansen, 978-614-4113
johansenc@netscout.com
or
Davies Murphy Group, Inc.
Brian Alberti, 781-418-2403
netscout@daviesmurphy.com
SOURCE: NetScout Systems, Inc.