Building a world-class learning environment

Finding space in a crowded field

India now has the world’s third-largest publicly-funded higher education system. The country has more than 1,000 universities and has added capacity for a further eight million students in the last decade. More than 35 million Indians are currently enrolled in university courses.

Amid this rapid growth, the challenge for many universities is to carve a unique proposition. In a competitive market for students, the best universities are now promoting the quality of the learning experience, their research budgets, and career opportunities via strong links to industry.

SASTRA Deemed University is a leading private university in Tamil Nadu, one of the largest Indian states. It has around 14,000 students across three campuses and works closely alongside global enterprises and the national government on research projects. It has two technology business incubators (TBI) linked to the Department of Science & Technology and the Department of Biotechnology.

“Our aim is to be seen as a world-class university, in terms of teaching and research,” says Dr. V. S. Shankar Sriram, associate dean & head of IT services, SASTRA Deemed University. “It involves us looking at every aspect of the SASTRA ecosystem.”

SASTRA is coming off a strong base. It is already world-leading in a number of areas. It has research links to Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), runs extremely popular open online courses, provides researchers with one petaflop of high-performance computing, and powers its main Thanjavur campus from solar energy.

For Dr. Sriram, there is an opportunity to create a digital mesh across all three campuses, where students can access all learning materials and take part in lectures remotely. SASTRA wants students to have the option of an entirely digital experience, from course enrolment to booking campus facilities, and from checking exam results to a live chat with faculty.

There is also an IoT layer. Each campus and each building can become ‘smart’, with SASTRA monitoring and managing crowd flows, energy use, and personal security. As industry becomes increasingly obsessed with understanding the productivity of employees, and the sustainability performance of buildings, SASTRA has an opportunity to create a real-time experiment with 14,000 participants.

Creating a mobile-first campus

“If we want to create a mobile-first campus where students and faculty are able to work from anywhere, from a phone or laptop,” says Dr. Sriram, “that needs a robust underlying network.”

The SASTRA network infrastructure is built on HPE Aruba Networking. It includes HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass network access control, nearly 500 Wi-Fi 6 Access Points, and 7200 Series Gateways. SASTRA works with Skylark, a local HPE Aruba Networking partner, on hardware installations.

“Why HPE Aruba Networking?” asks Sriram. “We’ve worked with HPE Aruba Networking since 2008, long before it became a global name. In that time the network has proved reliable, rugged, lightweight, and easy to manage.

“I mentioned ‘rugged’. Why would we need an access point to be rugged in a university setting? This is not heavy industry. No, but we have students playing cricket in the corridors. We need an AP to withstand a cricket ball!”

Securing the network through role-based access

The engagement establishes high-performance connectivity across all three campuses, creating the desired, mobile-first experience. The advantage of the unified HPE Aruba Networking approach is that SASTRA can ensure both wired and wireless connections are secure and different use cases can be accorded specific network access.

“We can push specific, role-based security policies across all campuses and users,” says Sriram. “Users will be more confident in using the network if they know it to be secure.”

SASTRA is also able to extend the network beyond the campus. The use of HPE Aruba Networking Remote Access Points (RAPs) allows select deans and researchers to work from anywhere; again, Sriram can enforce appropriate policies remotely. This is ideal for colleagues traveling to work off-site with new research collaborators, nationally and worldwide.

“We can extend the zero-trust perimeter directly through the HPE Aruba Networking controller,” he says. “It creates a new level of freedom for research teams.”

In terms of facilities management, the HPE Aruba Networking solution carries performance data from the 1.25-megawatt roof-top solar farm and the water treatment center. SASTRA can map performance versus campus attendance, refining energy use across its sites. It also establishes a platform on which to add new smart building functions, including heat mapping and access control.

“We already have many research projects underway, using sensors placed around the university,” says Sriram. “All that data is moved around on the HPE Aruba Networking infrastructure.”

The next network refinement is to dive deeper into the user experience. Sriram is looking at HPE Aruba Networking Central to simplify network management. This comes with AIOps built in. With 14,000+ users, multiple device types, and a constant stream of guests accessing the network, SASTRA needs more automation and greater proactivity.

“I’m very interested in AIOps,” says Sriram. “Quality of service is critical. The university's reputation is built on the experiences of individual students, faculty, and visitors, every day. I want to be able to look into the performance of specific applications, whether that is a student watching Netflix or a visiting researcher in one of our labs. Again, we aspire to world-class standards.”

Today, the network is performing as it needs. “On every performance indicator – coverage, reliability, segmentation, bandwidth – HPE Aruba Networking is delivering on its promise.”