Malaysia: Universiti Malaya Deploys H3C Converged Network for Video-Conferencing and VoIP Services

Background
The Universiti Malaya (UM) is the first university of Malaysia. Founded in 1895 and located on a sprawling campus in the center of Kuala Lumpur, UM is a dynamic university whose motto, "Ilmu Punca Kemajuan" (Knowledge is the Key to Success), reflects its mission to seek knowledge in all fields to nurture successful graduates for a successful nation.

UM, like many educational institutions, is grappling with a spectrum of operational issues such as the increasing need for fast communications and knowledge exchanges, realizing operational improvements, reducing costs, and protecting people and institutional assets. UM turned to technology to facilitate a major transformation in how they deliver instruction, manage operations, and to create a state-of-the-art campus environment. To be able to deliver improved collaboration and enhanced communications capabilities, UM needed a fully converged network.

Upon formal tendering, UM selected H3C to support its program to deploy a converged campus-wide network allowing the university to deploy high performance voice, video and data communications applications. H3C's demonstrated professionalism, experience in education projects and understanding of UM's expectations and requirements were strong factors in the selection process.

Technology Solution
H3C deployed a solution offering high-performance and security while supporting the converged applications UM wanted to implement, such as video conferencing and VoIP. The network backbones were migrated to 10G Ethernet from 155Mbps ATM and more hotspots were added across the 750-acre campus, and full range of H3C's switches products was applied in the network. With H3C hardware deployed throughout the network, UM has not only opened up innovative new multimedia teaching and research services like video-conferencing, but has reduced costs with value added services like VoIP. UM has also laid a solid foundation for future upgrades.

Why H3C?
To meet UM's needs, H3C designed an integrated enterprise architecture to optimize and expand the multimedia services that UM can use for teaching and research. The new converged network built on H3C's switches will address immediate bandwidth and performance issues and offer a clear upgrade plan that future-proofs their network investment while providing immediate cost savings.

Benefits
UM needed a converged network to support greater multimedia services. H3C designed a switched network solution providing a converged network to offer video-conferencing and VoIP services. The traffic control, overall speed and accessibility of network services have been improved offering a more reliable, scalable, cost-effective and manageable network. By taking full advantage of converged network technology for data, voice, and video traffic, UM has streamlined important business processes, eliminated infrastructure redundancies, and generated higher returns on capital investments.

"UM is seeing strong return on our technology investment. Video conferencing with Japanese and Chinese universities for e-lectures is now possible, and more tie-ups are being planned. The law faculty has been using video-conferencing for some time now, and the medical faculty interacts live with hospitals. Video-conferencing is integrated with the telephone system facilitating VoIP. The network built with H3C hardware, and its supportive partner, has helped cut down internal costs," said Encik Faharuddin, IT Director, Universiti Malaya.