AI-Native Network elevates learning for 26,500 learners in Aberdeen

A national goal to provide every student with a mobile device and Wi-Fi connectivity put Aberdeen City Council on a path to a network refresh. Its schools had older wireless networks that lacked the capacity and coverage to support 1:1 learning for 26,500 learners.

“We knew that having more devices connected to our legacy network might present challenges for learners, staff, and the IT team,” said council Infrastructure Architect Iain Pilbeam-Cornfield. “We wanted to move to Wi-Fi 6/6E to support a higher device density and take a cloud-first and AIOps approach to simplify network operations.”

The IT team also wanted to strengthen security, working toward Zero Trust network access controls for both school-issued and personal devices, as well as the ability to integrate with other apps like ServiceNow to further streamline operations. It conducted an extensive evaluation and testing to determine the right fit wired and wireless network.

Educators quickly realized that all learners in their classroom had fast, reliable Wi-Fi to access digital learning. Previously, only a limited number of learners could connect their laptops at once. “One teacher triumphantly came out of the classroom and raised her arms in victory for getting all her learners connected at the same time,” says Pilbeam-Cornfield.

The IT operations experience is transformed. Comprehensive AIOps simplifies operations and improves visibility into network, app, and device performance. “Marvis is really helpful to identify and resolve problems before users are impacted,” he says.

IT plans to integrate its Juniper network with ServiceNow to automate firmware upgrades on switches, which will streamline the change management processes, cutting hours of work to minutes.

Sustainability is another success. Even as the number of access points (APs) doubled and the switch capacity increased, power usage decreased. “We are using less power in our network with Juniper, even with double the APs,” he says.

“I’m extremely enthusiastic about everything Juniper is bringing us right now and adding in the future,” he says. “I see a lot of innovation from Juniper.”