Claremont High School Academy
Claremont High School Academy improves learning and saves on infrastructure costs. Faster access for staff and students to online resources.
About Claremont High School Academy
Claremont High School Academy is a multi-specialist school which specialises in Performing Arts, Maths & Computing and Applied Learning. Based in Harrow, Greater London, the school has over 1,500 students and offers a breadth of learning opportunities. Rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted, it strives to ensure that students follow a personalised curriculum in a safe and secure, yet educationally challenging environment.
Solution
After an in-depth solution assessment which was presented to the school's board, Exponential-e was selected to provide Claremont High School Academy with a scalable high-speed Internet service. Selection criteria included: company reputation and delivery framework, education sector experience, technology solution, cost-effectiveness and service levels.
Daniel Kirby commented: "The quality of the service has been excellent. The Connectivity is reliable and robust and we always get good response rates on the ping. The support and ongoing communications has been better than any other company that we deal with."
Exponential-e worked closely with Claremont High School Academy to ensure the new Internet service was delivered timely to coincide with the school holidays. The school's new service is delivered over an uncontended 100Mbps fibre-optic Connection with the same high-speed uploads as downloads - ensuring staff and students can quickly access and upload coursework from home. In addition, with Exponential-e's own Network integrated with the world's major content delivery Networks, such as BBC and YouTube, educational video content is only one hop away and can easily be streamed in classes without delays.
After successfully deploying the new Internet connection, Exponential-e was also approached to deliver a secure, automated Online Backup Service for the school's mission critical servers. The backup data is carried over the Internet connection via private peering to secure storage in Tier 3 UK-based Data Centres.
"Exponential-e went above and beyond all the other companies. They weren't just trying to make a sale; they're very passionate about what they do. When they invited us to come and see their Network Operations Centre and meet its employees, as well as offered to put us in contact with other schools using Exponential-e services, we knew it was the right company for us. We always receive regular phone calls from them asking how we're getting on. We just don't get that level of attention from any of our other suppliers."
Solution benefits
- Claremont High School Academy now has a high-speed, reliable, low latency Internet service with vastly improved upload and download speeds. The new Internet Connection facilitates a better learning environment for both students and staff.
- With the ability to split its Internet Connection and deliver multiple services over the same pipe, Claremont High School Academy is also making the most out of its infrastructure investment.
- The new secure online backup facility makes data backups faster and simpler.
Challenges
With a growing student population and a newly installed virtual learning platform, Claremont High School Academy's bandwidth was no longer sufficient for the school's needs. The school regularly peaked in its data usage with even basic server administration tasks such as offsite backups taking a considerable time to complete. Since the school's new virtual learning platform was hosted on site, uploading and downloading coursework remotely over the Internet was a slow process. This made it inconvenient for staff and students to access the platform from home and hampered the schools ability to provide an outstanding learning experience.
Daniel Kirby, Network Manager at Claremont High School Academy commented: "We'd hit our limit in terms of bandwidth and it was really affecting our staff and students since accessing coursework could be incredibly slow. We needed to increase our bandwidth substantially and we also needed a more scalable and reliable solution."
The school was also promoting the use of educational video content from YouTube and BBC iPlayer within their classes.
However, with existing bandwidth not being sufficient, streaming video content over the Internet posed real challenges and often wasted valuable teaching time.
As a result, the school recognised the need for a change and approached a number of providers to find a more suitable Internet service capable of supporting the new technologies which are required to deliver a 21st century educational experience. Any new solution would need to be robust, reliable, scalable and cost-effective.
Features
- Increased bandwidth capacity and performance.
- Savings on infrastructure costs by delivering multiple services over the same connection.
- Improved virtual learning experience with symmetrical upload and download speeds.
Exponential-e went above and beyond all the other companies. They weren't just trying to make a sale; they're very passionate about what they do. We always receive regular phone calls from them asking how we're getting on. We just don't get that level of attention from any of our other suppliers.
Daniel Kirby - Network Manager.
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