Kent School District Deploys New Wiring Closet Switches And Gets New IT Services While Keeping Operational Cost Constant

The Kent School District is the fourth largest school district in the state of Washington comprised of four high schools, six middle schools, 28 elementary schools and two academies with nearly 27,000 students and 3200 employees. Kent’s IT staff were challenged to support a doubling of networked computers, new IT service requirements including virtualized desktops, smart boards, video surveillance and unified communications all while keeping their operational budget constant. Kent under went a district-wide network refresh, where the IT team sought to replace the current edge network that included products from ProCurve Networking by HP and 3Com for Cisco. I talk with Thuan Nguyen, Director of IT at Kent School District about his options, decisions and results. It’s a fascinating case of what can be done in IT today.