Sometimes trust is a three-way street

Studentsamskipnaden SiO, or simply SiO, was founded in 1939 at the University of Oslo, the only university in Norway at that time. From day one, the goal of the organization has been quite simple: to make the life of the local students easier. The means to achieve it, however, are anything but. Today, the organization provides a complex range of services spanning the entire city and surrounding municipalities, including approximately 9000 housing units, healthcare clinics (including GPs, dentists, psychiatrists and psychologists), daycare centers, career counseling, gyms, coffee shops, canteens, and more.

Though SiO was originally only linked to the University of Oslo, today it cooperates with a total of 28 affiliated educational institutions. The network, however, was built long before that, which means that the organization has experienced its fair share of challenges.

“What we had before was a very complex system with a lot of growing pains. The solution couldn’t scale with the growth of the organization, so the problems with stability, efficiency and control became more and more evident with each passing year”, says Jan Henrik Glenne, Systems Manager at SiO, who has been involved with the company since 2011.

Being an early adopter has many advantages, but it also comes with certain drawbacks. SiO started building a large network early and over the years, the used networking technologies and standards simply became obsolete.

“Our IT environment covers more than 60 buildings spread all over Oslo and surrounding areas and consists not only of employee computers, cash registers or PoS terminals, but also, and maybe more importantly, a lot of smart building IoT devices such as access controls, door locks, fire alarm sensors, ventilation or security cameras”, Jan Henrik Glenne goes over the list. “Even the washing machines are connected. Students can check their availability online, make a reservation for specific days and hours, and pay for the service – all via the SiO homepage. We also have six really big fitness centers with the state-of-the-art machines equipment like these treadmills with Netflix and other streaming services, which rely on the bandwidth quite heavily”.

Obviously, there are as many things that can go wrong as there are technologies that need to communicate and work together. But who hasn’t experienced even some small problems with the administration during their student years, right? Well, SiO’s case is quite different. If a student house was to lose connectivity, the students wouldn’t be able to access their online courses. Or even access their apartment, for that matter.

To overcome the problems and challenges that have amassed around the network over the years, SiO turned for help to NetNordic – an Extreme Black Diamond Partner and the leading integrator in cloud and infrastructure in Norway, specialized in products and services for business-critical infrastructure.

“Insufficient network capacity, a lot of very complex, or even impossible to fix issues, vulnerability to changes, long and frequent downtimes, no control and overview of the network – those were the biggest challenges that needed to be addressed”, says Arild Steen, Sales Director for Operators & Utilities at NetNordic Norge. “Given the scale, size and complexity of the project, we offered SiO a technically sound and highly flexible Network-as-a-Service solution based on our excellent, long-term partnership with Extreme Networks”.

To solve the problems of inefficiencies and lack of scalability, NetNordic recommended using the Extreme Networks' scalable, cost-effective family of edge switches: the ExtremeSwitching X440-G2 and X435 Series, coupled with a handful of core fabric switches. The edge switches are powered by ExtremeXOS – a highly resilient operating system that provided continuous uptime, manageability, and operational efficiency.

“We needed to connect a lot of places, so we installed 48-ports Extreme switches with the standard-based 30W PoE ports to power Ethernet-connected edge devices, such as IP cameras or over one hundred new Wi-Fi 6 access points, also from Extreme, without the need for additional electric cabling”, explains Knut Arne Nygård, Chief Architect at NetNordic Norge. “We’ve come to know those Extreme switches as reliable and efficient equipment that provides high-performance routing and switching, flexible stacking, significantly reduced deployment times, and comprehensive security, among others”.

Maybe even more importantly, choosing X440-G2 switches allowed NetNordic to build a traditional, on-premises architecture while extending the power of cloud management via the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine solution.

“What we provide to SiO is a complete Network-as-a-Service solution, meaning that we’ve been responsible for designing, building, deploying, and managing the entire network infrastructure for the customer, so that he needn’t to worry about anything”, says Knut Arne Nygård. “ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine gives us a comprehensive, unified dashboard with a granular view of users, devices, ports and applications for both wired and wireless networks, enabling us a very efficient inventory and network topology management”.

“I was actually impressed with what NetNordic showed us during the meetings. Such level of control and visibility has clearly allowed the IT team to drastically reduce mean-time-to-fix, which – given the fact that most young people aren’t the most patient users – has gone a long way for us”, Jan Henrik Glenne adds. “In the past, I used to work every day going from site to site and providing solutions to problems. Today we can feel more network stability, capacity, bandwidth and efficiency, and that’s also reflected in the feedback that we get from many of our third parties”.

You don’t see a customer handing the reins of their entire network over to an external party, but when you do, you must know that there’s a lot of trust in the air. Especially, when we talk about a project of that kind of magnitude. And that’s exactly how the things are between SiO and NetNordic.

“We have different networks divided into multiple VLANs. For example, since we are providing medical services, we need to have a connection to the Norwegian health net, so that network is much more focused on security because there's a lot of sensitive patient data”, explains Jan Henrik Glenne. “But apart from the guest networks and the employee network at our office, we have an operating VLAN for the entire maintenance. All the building IoT devices like access controls or video surveillance are connected to this network”.

Operating a Wide Area Network for such a large number of technical services and trusting that NetNordic can manage it without having to separate networks for each individual service, like for example security cameras or door locks, goes to show how much SiO trusts NetNordic to put technical assets on the network and basically use it to operate the facilities.

“Our experienced team brings forth the whole package, from providing services for more than eight hundred employees to managing guest networks and the IoT devices", says Arild Steen. "And all of that is based on a model that’s highly transparent for both sides, with a fixed price per active device in the network per month”.

“NetNordic is a flexible and reliable partner, providing an excellent match for our needs, both in terms of business and technology. The complexity of all the services and solutions we have for the students is so high, nobody is able to see that before they start working with us. Take kindergartens and medical centers, for example. It’s like connecting different worlds, but NetNordic can handle that”, says Jan Henrik Glenne. “And as far as the technology goes, in my opinion, and I'm coming from the Cisco world, the solution from Extreme Networks works just as good, or maybe even better!”.

A chair needs at least three legs to stand on, and so does every business. Luckily for SiO, all the elements are there. Right now, NetNordic is poised to provide networking equipment from Extreme and the company’s signature level of services to a newly renovated building which will serve as a gathering center for the students. Given the steady growth of the organization and the increasing need for even more scalability, efficiency, and redundancy, both parties are also in talks about expanding the core network.

“It’s basically a matter of trust now. SiO orders, and NetNordic provides. And, on the other hand, we trust Extreme Networks enough to know that what is promised, will be delivered and will do the job”, Arild Steen concludes.

Take a look behind another joint project by NetNordic and Extreme Networks: one of the largest cloud-managed network deployments in Sweden, recognized as a 'Network Project of the Year' by the Network Computing Magazine!

NetNordic’s focus is on creating and delivering smart intelligent integrations, specializing in solutions and services for mission critical infrastructure within the area of Cyber Security, secure Data Centers, secure Networks and secure Integrated Communication. The company acts as an enabler for enhancing the mission critical business, and is a leading Nordic provider of cloud and infrastructure. NetNordic simplifies complexity.

NetNordic’s mission is to build and deliver solutions and services for a better society. The company has approximately 500 employees, represented in subsidiaries in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. In total, NetNordic has 13 offices across the Nordic region.