Creating a fully integrated digital learning environment

Education is no longer a classroom-based experience. In the UAE, Innoventures Education is transforming its five school campuses to enable mobile access to materials and digital tools, and to deliver a seamless connection between in-person and online learning.

Educating a culturally rich, international community

The education sector in the United Arab Emirates is unlike anywhere in the world. In a country where the population has tripled in size over the last 20 years, and the real estate boom has transformed the physical scale of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, schools struggle to keep pace with the rate of growth. There is fierce competition for teaching talent and the space to build new schools.

The UAE is also incredibly diverse. As the economy booms, expats from all around the world have chosen to settle in the country. Education for expats is not free and fee-paying parents have high expectations.

This is the market in which Innoventures Education operates and thrives. Since its foundation in 2004, the group has grown to include five multi-curriculum schools and eight nurseries. Today, more than 8500 students from 100 countries receive an Innoventures education.

“We are a culturally rich, international community,” says Poonam Bhojani, CEO, Innoventures Education. “We aim to empower students with a holistic, rigorous, and international education for success in an ever-changing world.”
Increasingly, a first-class education experience demands a first-class technology experience. Innoventures Education is creating an environment across all its schools where every student and every staff member can use their own device to access learning materials. Entire campuses now provide wireless access, allowing teaching to come out of the classroom. Homework is submitted online with ongoing dialog between teacher and student.

“Our mission is to leverage technologies that work together cohesively to augment the overall experience that students have at our schools,” says Bhojani.

Pioneering the digitization of education

Innoventures Education is creating a digital layer to its operations. Schools now support a wide range of devices including desktops, laptops, projectors, interactive display panels, tablets, CCTV systems, signage TVs, and attendance and access control systems.

“We live in the digital era and our mission is to empower our students for success in today’s dynamic, global community,” says Bhojani. “Technology is fundamental to this vision. We have pioneered the education sector in the UAE by incorporating digital learning aids into all aspects of our students’ learning experience – both within our campuses and beyond.”

A strong network is the backbone of IT services and is an essential requirement, she continues. Innoventures Education wants students and teachers to be able to securely access Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and other popular teaching, learning, and collaboration applications without experiencing delays, jitter, or dropped connections.

The group has reimagined its network to allow seamless mobility and simple access. It has created a network architecture that provides strong governance around network access while simplifying operations. In a BYOD world, it has streamlined the way users are recognized, establishing a unified approach to the wired and wireless network.

“Our goal was a zero-trust architecture, where all our mission-critical cloud applications – our student management system, library management system, e-assessments, and learning management system – are seamlessly and securely accessible to relevant stakeholders,” Bhojani explains.

Eliminating the physical boundaries of the campus

The Innoventures Education network is built on HPE Aruba Networking technology. The use of HPE Aruba Networking Central and HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass creates a unified network architecture, with more than 1000 HPE Aruba Networking access points eliminating wireless blackspots across all campuses. More than 10,000 devices connect to the network on an average day.

Innoventures Education is a long-standing HPE Aruba Networking customer and was one the first educational institutes in the UAE to implement an end-to-end HPE Aruba Networking architecture. Bhojani says the importance of the network upgrade demanded the group to consider all options.

“While we did our due diligence and evaluated other vendors, we were especially impressed by HPE Aruba Networking’s diverse range of enhanced Network Access Control (NAC) solutions and security orchestration with HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass, as well as its broad range of wireless access points and switches unified in a coherent design,” she says.

HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass is key to supporting secure BYOD for staff and students. The solution’s QuickConnect, Policy Manager, OnGuard, and Guest features ensure that personal and institution-owned devices alike can rapidly connect to the network while checking that these meet pre-set configuration and security criteria and that only relevant resources are accessible based on predefined roles.

With operations spread across five campuses, simplified, centralized management of the entire network – made possible by the implementation of HPE Aruba Networking Central and HPE Aruba Networking 7200 series controllers – has been tremendously beneficial to Innoventures Education’s IT team. “HPE Aruba Networking facilitates automation of previously manual processes, which leads to the smooth running of our network. This also simplifies operations and reduces costs and risks,” Bhojani says.

HPE Aruba Networking Central incorporates a comprehensive AIOps solution that automates routine troubleshooting tasks, leading to a reduction in IT support tickets and associated expenses. It also provides detailed visibility into the group’s network infrastructure and achieves client profiling accuracy of up to 99%, utilizing native telemetry from HPE Aruba Networking infrastructure, eliminating the need for physical collectors or agents.

“Because of the considerable reduction in connectivity-related support tickets and the significantly improved time to resolution, Innoventures Education now requires fewer resources for network management. We expect this to result in savings of 50% over a three-year period,” Bhojani adds.

It isn’t just the HPE Aruba Networking technology that has impressed Innoventures Education. “We find the HPE Aruba Networking team to be customer centric. Their paradigm isn’t just the implementation of devices, but rather, to address their customers’ challenges and provide effective solutions,” says Bhojani.

“HPE Aruba Networking’s wired and wireless connectivity has eliminated the physical boundaries of the campus and enabled our students and teachers to stay connected, both on campus and online. This has made it possible for us to deliver anywhere, anytime teaching and learning, thereby creating a fully integrated learning environment,” Bhojani concludes. “Most importantly, we have happy students who love coming to school every morning with a smile on their face and a spring in their step. This for me is the most gratifying aspect of being with our wonderful young people.”