Networking: Case studies

Faced with extremely remote desert locations and a complete lack of network infrastructure across the stark landscape, IT workers with the Nevada Department of Corrections needed to connect 24 prison facilities around the state.

For the Pan American Health Organization, advanced conferencing technologies are literally a lifesaver.

With wired phones dying off at colleges, IT executives on campus are looking to VOIP and unified communications platforms as ways to meet the needs of students and faculty using wireless devices.

WAN optimization technology is a way to save money -- take that to the bank. For instance, U.S.-based custom machinery manufacturer Curt G. Joa, avoided the cost of adding a server to its German office by installing WAN-acceleration gear from Silver Peak.

Wireless LANs have grown in the workplace -- in size, number of installations and technology maturity -- to the point that many IT managers now expect to expand the uses of their networks in a new round of investments within the next year or two.

Savvis is spending US$33 million to replace the two aging networks connecting its data centres with a single IP backbone featuring Cisco core and edge routers.

Mining and construction distributor Komatsu Australia is overhauling its application infrastructure to drive efficiency and keep pace with more modern technology.

Imagine being the IT director faced with this problem: Your company has just been bought by a private equity firm that wants to take the operation global. You need to upgrade a 10-year-old network, but you don't know what countries you'll need to support or when you'll need to support them.

It's a pity that this year's edition of the Arizona Cardinals, a U.S. football team, is struggling so mightily in the field, because the organization's IT team is putting together a championship season. Through a combination of teamwork, timing, and bold strategy, Technology Director Mark Feller transformed the brand-new Cardinal Stadium -- already a crown jewel of NFL venues -- into a high-tech wonderland. Working with IT solutions provider Insight and Cisco Systems, the Cardinals have succeeded in building out one of the world's most sophisticated converged IP networks.

The Contra Costa Community College District in California discovered its IPSec VPN gave outside vendors too much access and caused too many support headaches, so it switched to SSL VPN technology and wound up saving money to boot.

The New York Times is changing its address, with a moved planned for next spring to a new state-of-the-art facility in Times Square. Along with glass-and-steel architecture, desks without coffee stains and crumbs in the keyboards, the 3,500 or so Times employees plan to move to an all IP data, voice and video network, all humming along on a single Nortel-built infrastructure.