MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - Feb 25, 2013) - Faced with the need to accommodate an increase in its student body, the introduction of always-on tablet computing and the growing demand for connectivity, Parade College has deployed a high-performance campus network from Brocade (NASDAQ: [ BRCD ]) to revolutionize the user experience. The Catholic secondary school, which has two campuses in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, now has implemented an enterprise-grade network to better manage its traffic loads on a 24/7 basis.

With a history dating back to 1871, Parade College has long been a beacon of excellence for secondary education in Melbourne. This drive for excellence also covers the provisioning of IT infrastructure for students and staff, with its existing network supporting 1,200 desktop PCs, 140 wireless access points, IP telephony and 180 CCTV cameras.

"We're going to be expanding from 1,800 to 2,200 students in the next few years and are also planning to equip all our students with tablet devices, which is certainly going to drive network traffic higher," said Daniel Caporetto, IT manager of Parade College. "The existing network infrastructure was dated and consisted of different vendors, which created management issues. There was no redundancy in the system and the amount of throughput it could support was already over-subscribed. We therefore determined to deploy a new, single-vendor solution to support traffic growth, as well as improve reliability and manageability."

Brocade partner [ Mycom ] evaluated Parade College's networking requirements and designed a solution to integrate the two campus networks and meet the needs for Parade College's faculty staff and students. One of the key areas of focus was the network core, which depended on a single switch and was identified as both a bottleneck and a serious potential point of failure.

To remove this vulnerability and boost the bandwidth across the network, Mycom specified the deployment of Brocade® ICX® 6610 Switches at the network core. These switches can be stacked using four full-duplex 40 Gbps stacking ports that provide 320 Gbps of backplane stacking bandwidth. They also provide full redundancy, eliminating inter-switch bottlenecks and they deliver wire-speed, non-blocking performance across all 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10 GbE ports.

The access layer within Parade College's new campus networks is provided by Brocade ICX 6430 Switches with Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities to support IP phones, cameras and WiFi access points. With up to forty-eight 1 GbE access ports per switch, and additional ports for stacking and unlinking to the core, the Brocade solution gives Parade College enterprise-class performance and reliability at an entry-level price.

"The overall network design, close working relationship, recommendation of Brocade infrastructure and hands on migration support was a winning package," said Caporetto. "The support has always been there when we've needed it, which hasn't been often since the network has performed as we needed it to from day one."

"Our campus network solutions are gaining significant traction throughout the Australian education sector thanks to their cost-effective performance and operating economics. With the Brocade ICX switches, Parade College has a non-stop network core with scalability to meet its future needs and a plug-and-play access layer -- all of which can be managed through the same software. That's a pretty compelling value proposition for budget-conscious school administrations," said Charlie Foo, Asia Pacific Vice President of Brocade.

This network platform is supported by Brocade's world-class support infrastructure. With multiple Brocade Technical Assistance Centers and more than 170 parts depots in over 40 countries, Brocade is capable of delivering reliable support whenever and wherever it is needed.

About MYCOM
MYCOM Pty Ltd was established in 2005 with the aim of providing infrastructure solutions to Australian business. It achieved Brocade Alliance Partner Network Program Premier member status in 2011 and to date has successfully implemented Brocade solutions across multiple industries.

About Brocade
 Brocade (NASDAQ: [ BRCD ]) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. ([ www.brocade.com ])

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