Glasgow Caledonian University

Customer
Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) is based in Glasgow City Centre and is one of Scotland’s largest universities with 2,500 staff and 17,000 students from over 100 countries. GCU has a well established reputation for providing high-quality teaching, learning and research, dating back throughout its founding institutions to1875. All programmes are designed to offer students an effective combination of academic study and practical experience.

The Contract
In July 2009 GCU identified the need to upgrade and improve their ICT infrastructure in line with the demands of a 21st century learning environment. The £1.7 million contract, which will run for five years initially, will see Capita IT Services upgrade and refresh the current WLAN infrastructure and associated services to deliver a network capable of meeting GCU’s need for fast, secure, reliable access to their systems and services for both students and staff. The new infrastructure will deliver improved efficiencies and reduce both capital and operational expenditure for the University over time.

Benefits
The infrastructure designed and installed by Capita IT Services will provide GCU’s students and staff with an enhanced communications platform, which will enable them to access learning tools and systems from anywhere across the campus; quickly, securely and at any time. The university’s infrastructure is now fully resilient and capable of handling huge volumes of ‘traffic’ and multiple systems to deliver complete business continuity. There will also be an environmental impact as space, time and paper are all saved. GCU, as one of Glasgow’s partners in ‘lifelong learning’, are also now able to provide the wider Glasgow community with access to their WLAN. Regardless of a persons age or background they will have a gateway to the information society, as a means of social inclusion.