Here's what happened at EDUCAUSE
Our conversations at EDUCAUSE this year transformed. We discussed ‘what’s possible with your network?’ and ‘what could students do with our network to help them become successful?’ Smart Campus solutions help transform the student experience to attract and retain students by engaging them in campus life.
This past Halloween, in addition to scary costumes and the search for full-sized candy bars, it was time for EDUCAUSE 2018 (in the Mile-High city of Denver) – the largest conference in North America for Higher Education IT professionals. If you recall, last year Ruckus introduced Smart Campus and described the merger of Smart Cities solutions with Smart Home expectations. See our ‘Run-up to EDUCAUSE’ blog for a quick refresher.
Through many excellent conversations and panel sessions, we continued to learn that while today’s Campus IT staff are tasked with delivering a ‘home-away-from-home’ student experience, CIO and campus administrators are more concerned with a growing trend whereby “students have the power” – to choose where to attend, whether to stay or not, to voice complaints on social media, and most notably to vote their priorities in Student Councils or Student Body Governments – sometimes with budgets as well. Campus administrators are adjusting strategies to attract and retain students given this new reality. Smart Campus solutions help transform the student experience to attract and retain students by engaging them in campus life. Smart Campus solutions provide benefits ranging from smart living, smart learning and smart safety, all while enabling building automation for lowering operational costs and green initiatives. (see our eBook for more info).
Of course, once the decision is made to start a journey to a Smart Campus, network engineers understand that digital transformation can be complicated and expensive when tackled ad-hoc. Overlay networks abound with each new project or initiative. IoT, Wi-Fi, Switching, in-building LTE, etc. This creates an overload of gateways, dashboards, sensor infrastructure, etc. Ruckus’ vision is to create converged network access, which simplifies life for IT staff by delivering edge switching, Wi-Fi, IoT, and LTE access all from one vendor infrastructure – one platform to manage, secure and troubleshoot all with your campus connections. We call this ‘redefining connectivity’ because the user doesn’t need to care how they connect, or over which network, they simply want to connect quickly and reliably (and for free, if possible).