Customer Success Story
University Fortifies Network to Bolster ICT and Research Levels
A leading research university in Queensland, Australia, James Cook University (JCU) conducts internationally recognized research into tropical life. Its mission is to find ways to combat threats facing the Great Barrier Reef, save the world’s plants and animals from climate change, eliminate parasitic diseases, and conduct numerous other related activities. JCU turned to Juniper data center and campus switches to connect approximately 27,000 students and staff to a cloud-ready network that improves its ICT service levels and its data sharing, collaboration, and research outcomes.
Overview
| Company | James Cook University |
| Industry | Education, Research |
| Products used | QFX Series, EX Series, QFX5100, EX4300 |
| Region | APAC |
Business Challenge
Some 40 percent of the world’s inhabitants live in the tropics, where they’re at risk from population growth and climate change. JCU analyzes life in these regions in its quest to find solutions that might help temper these challenges. It serves approximately 22,000 students and 5000 staff across three campuses in Australia, Cairns, and Singapore. Many of those users are researchers who must manipulate and transfer massive data sets with uninterrupted connectivity while they simulate, model, and visualize complex systems.
Secure Inter-Campus Connectivity
Partnering with Juniper, JCU built a network that securely connects its campuses to all of JCU’s data resources. The network has a consistent design across the core, data center, and campus using QFX5100 and EX4300 Ethernet switches. The IT team can apply policies that follow an application or workload as it traverses the researcher’s various network segments from campus to data center and, eventually, to the cloud.
Business Results
- Researchers can exchange massive files with peers across great distances in a fraction of the time it took previously.
- JCU has segmented its network for resiliency, an approach that contains the impact of a failure or breach to deliver better, more consistent user experiences.
- Students now have anytime access to more than 49,000 lecture recordings.
- Juniper power-efficient switches align with the university’s sustainability focus.
The Products
QFX network switches deliver industry-leading throughput and scalability, a comprehensive routing stack, the open programmability of Junos OS, and the broadest set of EVPN-VXLAN and IP fabric capabilities. Juniper offers a wide range of switches for data center spine and leaf switches, campus distribution and core, or data center gateway and interconnect.
The EX Series Ethernet Switches are cloud-ready, high-performance access and aggregation/core layer switches designed for enterprise branch, campus, and data center networks. Wired access networks don’t have to be complex—you can reduce risk and cost without compromising performance, quality, and innovation.
Junos Space Network Management Platform
Junos Space Network Management Platform is a centralized platform for managing and orchestrating network devices and services through a single pane of glass.