12 October 2023

The Central University of Technology (CUT), a leading higher education institution based in South Africa’s Free State province, has successfully rolled out phase one of its three-year network and WiFi infrastructure upgrade, an important step in the university’s digital transformation journey.

“The driving force behind this infrastructure upgrade is our digital transformation strategy, with the aim of improving our connectivity efficiencies and speed, and our use of 4IR technologies,” said Busi Matube, CUT’s ICT director and chief digital officer. “This will allow us to better leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) for other projects we have in place, such as smart buildings, smart bins, a virtual reality environment for our engineering students, and more, located in different areas.”

Missing the grade

Prior to the project, CUT’s infrastructure was failing to meet the needs of both students and staff, with connectivity issues becoming a sore point for the university.

According to Lucky Matjelo, deputy director: ICT infrastructure services at CUT, the university’s WiFi, which was set up in 2009 as its secondary mode of connectivity after the LAN, had become the primary connection point for these users.

“Over this time, technology has changed and advanced, and the existing solution, which was not scaled for high volume connectivity, was under increasing pressure,” said Matjelo. “With around 22,000 staff and students on campus, each with a minimum of two devices apiece and expectations of being able to connect wirelessly around the campus, connection speed had increasingly become an issue for us, and end-of-life infrastructure needed to be replaced.”

Challenges for CUT included low through-put, resulting in poor connectivity; poor coverage (both inside and outside); and a lack of visibility on the network. This was particularly challenging in the event of users reporting connectivity challenges, as the CUT team was unable to ascertain what was happening on the network at the time.
“The COVID-19 pandemic also played a role in these increasing needs, as the reliance on virtual meetings increased, further overloading the WiFi infrastructure,” added Matube.

Digitally transforming to meet targets

(l-r): Busi Matube, CUT ICT director and chief digital officer; Henry Denner, Datacentrix account manager: commercial; and Lucky Matjelo, deputy director: ICT infrastructure services at CUT.

CUT decided that a network and WiFi infrastructure upgrade was critical for the university to meet its digital transformation objective of building a smart campus, where both students and staff are always connected through improved network infrastructure and reliable, responsive connectivity.

The new wireless network infrastructure would ensure the connectedness of students and staff to digital resources both internal and external to the network, as well as providing the medium through which CUT could relay data from smart buildings’ backend systems for analysis and reporting, and to provide a connected access control system for a more secure campus.

CUT went out on tender through its partner PURCO to appoint a service provider that could implement a WiFi solution that would be able to seamlessly integrate with the university’s existing network infrastructure and improve its WiFi services.

“An additional requirement was that the supplier should have done a similar project in the higher education sector,” said Matjelo.

“Datacentrix’s strong footprint in education, which extends to the support of several local universities, and our excellent vendor certification levels, as Aruba Platinum Partner with ClearPass Policy Management competencies and the 2022 winner of the Aruba Partner Deal of the year award, were critical in our appointment to provide the procurement, configuration and installation of WiFi equipment for a period of three years at both the Welkom and Bloemfontein campuses of the university, as were our Level One Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment certification and competitive pricing,” said Henry Denner, Datacentrix account manager: commercial.

Greater network visibility

Benefits experienced by CUT from the rollout include the improvement of WiFi connectivity issues in high-traffic areas, like the library and labs, where previously students had experienced serious connectivity challenges due to low WiFi signal. These signal dropouts have stopped completely since Datacentrix began the project, explained Matube.

“There has also been greater visibility on the network, as well as more opportunity to engage with users to understand and solve challenges. Now, when a student or staff member logs a query, these can be tracked according to what the individual was doing on the network at the time, and where any problems lie,” said Matube. “I have personally worked with Datacentrix for a number of years now, and there is no doubt as to the organisation’s strong technical capabilities. For this project, Datacentrix has delivered far beyond the set-up of our equipment, and has provided excellent after-sales support to CUT’s small IT team, augmenting the skills we have available internally. Our Datacentrix contacts are always available and the experience with them has been excellent.”

“The trusted partnership built over recent years between Datacentrix and CUT has been integral to the success of this project. Magical outcomes like these require constructive input from the client, our technology partners, in this case Aruba, as well as from the experts at Datacentrix. We look forward to many more successful engagements with CUT,” said Francois Jacobs, sales manager: commercial at Datacentrix.