Utica Colleges Used This Vendor to Rebuild a Better Network Infrastructure

At Utica College, faculty and staff strive to do more with less.

This was especially the case of the college’s recent network upgrade.

Vijay Sonty, CIO of Utica College, says his team was looking to update its network infrastructure and support collaboration without breaking the bank.

“We had a five year old, outdated network infrastructure and our network components were leased,” he says. “In a different timeline they were all coming off leases, so we were stuck with the option to either pay at the end of the lease and do a buy-out and stay with the old equipment, or package all this together, form a strategic partnership and do a big bang approach where we renewed the whole network infrastructure, including wired and wireless right from the core all the way to the edge.”

The college, of course, went “all the way to the edge” with Extreme Networks:

3 Reasons Why Utica Went Extreme

1) Closing a mixed shop

Sonty says the college opted for Extreme because its infrastructure was a “mixed shop,” and already used some of Extreme’s solutions, along with some from Cisco.

Sonty and his team were already familiar with Extreme’s pieces, and wanted to solidify the new network under one vendor.

2) Holding onto an extra $1 million

Forming a partnership with Extreme helped the college keep an extra $1 million in its wallet.

“We had Cisco, and Extreme, and the majority of the components were Extreme components,” Sonty says. “We actually took a very systematic approach, we did a mini RFI, and we talked to both Cisco and Extreme, and there were many reasons why we chose Extreme over Cisco. I think the big one was the value for the dollar – we were able to do a complete network upgrade, wired/wireless and would have saved a million dollars over Cisco.”

3) Getting there fast

Sonty says his staff was few and far between, and wasn’t able to deploy the new network’s solutions as quickly as they would have liked.

However, Extreme’s integrator helped Utica pick up the pace.

“When you do a complete infrastructure upgrade…it takes a solid year to implement,” Sonty says. “Partnering with Extreme was real handy because we were able to accomplish that in a span of six months, so that was helpful. Also, Extreme’s systems integrator was very helpful in providing the extra support needed; because of a limited staff, we couldn’t roll out very quickly.”