Ferrum College Enrolls Juniper Networks to Scale Up to New Levels of Service, Security and Reliability

Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced that Ferrum College in Virginia has chosen to rebuild its entire campus-wide network with Juniper switching, network access control (NAC) and firewall/VPN solutions. Ferrum selected Juniper to meet the demanding network requirements posed by exceptional growth in student enrollment, and to enable the college to extend 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) throughput across the network in support of advanced Voice over IP (VoIP) by fall 2009.

Founded in 1913 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwestern Virginia, Ferrum College offers the second-oldest environmental sciences program in the U.S., and has been ranked in the Top 50 Southern Baccalaureate Colleges by U.S. News & World Report. Enrollment has grown significantly in the past five years, and this trend is expected to continue. New academic programs, the addition of an experiential 3-week term, new residence halls, and renovated classrooms have all escalated demands on the campus-wide network infrastructure from students, faculty, and staff. The college’s expansion has also heightened the technology security concerns posed by a plethora of student personal communications devices.

"To keep pace with and manage our growth, we’re increasing our delivery of online course materials to support continuous learning, augmenting our learning management solutions, and plan to deploy voice-over-IP next year,” said Dr. Christine Stinson, chief information officer of Ferrum College. "Our selection of Juniper Networks to replace our existing network infrastructure was driven by Juniper’s ability to improve network performance, improve reliability and decrease maintenance costs in line with our continued expansion.”

The Juniper Networks EX 4200 and EX 3200 series switches, chosen for their high throughput, open interoperability and lower energy consumption, will serve as the backbone of the new Ferrum College network. The Juniper Networks EX-series switches’ ability to support a full 15.4 watts of Class 3 Power over Ethernet (PoE) on all 48 ports (versus 24 ports in competing switches) was "one of the most important items” in Ferrum’s decision, according to Stinson. "Other switches have software that helps moderate power usage, and can be enhanced with subsequent hardware purchases, but the Juniper switches will meet our expected VoIP needs right out of the box, while consuming 15-30 percent less power than the competition.”

Juniper’s security solutions and modular network architecture, based on JUNOS® software, were also key factors in Ferrum’s decision to select Juniper Networks. In addition to the EX-series switches, Ferrum is deploying Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway (SSG) firewall/VPN appliances, which are purpose-built to deliver an ideal mix of high performance, security, and LAN/WAN connectivity for regional and branch office deployments.

Ferrum will also deploy the Juniper Networks Infranet Controller 4000 (IC4000), the centralized, hardened policy management server at the heart of Juniper Unified Access Control (UAC) solution. Juniper’s UAC solution provides dynamic, adaptable and scalable network access control that reduces the cost and complexity of network security, compliance and continuity while protecting networks and applications. Juniper’s UAC solution interoperates seamlessly with the EX 3200 and EX 4200 series Ethernet switches and Juniper’s SSG platforms being deployed by Ferrum to deliver flexible, comprehensive access control and policy enforcement across Ferrum’s extended enterprise.

"Today’s students depend on an increasingly diverse collection of networked devices as part of their campus and learning environment,” Stinson said. "Juniper’s integration of security into their solutions — ‘from the inside, out’ — helps us balance the heavily increasing demand for network access with rigorous policies for maintaining network security.”

Ferrum College also faces increasing demand for differing network access privileges for different users. "With our old, un-segmented network, ensuring unified and secure access has proven difficult,” Stinson said. "Moreover, if one element of the network goes down, it all goes down. Juniper’s modular architecture, based upon JUNOS software, will bring us the reliability, resilience and maintenance we require to scale our network in line with our growth.”

"We are extremely excited to help Ferrum College implement a Juniper Networks high-performance network infrastructure across its campus,” said Hitesh Sheth, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper’s Ethernet Platforms Business Group. "We designed our new EX-series Ethernet switches to complete our high-performance network infrastructure for the enterprise, and it’s very gratifying to see customers such as Ferrum College recognize the value of the performance, reliability, security, and scalability we can deliver.”

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks, Inc. is the leader in high-performance networking. Juniper offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network. This fuels high-performance businesses. Additional information can be found at www.juniper.net.

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