Thirteen (13) Middletown Public School buildings are now connected by Digital BackOffice managed optical fiber and Gigabit Ethernet hardware switches.
“The primary intent of upgrading the school district WAN is to provide a significant increase in bandwidth to facilitate the distribution of educational content and business applications between all schools” said Michael Skott, the Middletown Public Schools Director of Technology. “The 100% optical fiber wide area network provided by the Digital BackOffice will prepare the Middletown school district to:
Centralize computer servers and other shared equipment, so that the IT staff can more effectively support both business and curriculum software.
- Utilize high bandwidth applications like video conferencing, streaming video, and content on demand to facilitate the delivery of instruction and curriculum.
- Converge voice and data services on a unified network in the future.
- Provide equitable access for all students at all schools to the high speed state education network, the CEN.”
Costs for the network will be substantially offset through the use of E-rate discounts. E-rate is a national funding program that evolved from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and supports technology and telecommunications services in public schools and libraries. It is anticipated that the E-rate program will fund approximately 63% of the annual cost of operating the managed optical Ethernet network.
The Digital BackOffice is no stranger to the public sector, having successfully integrated high-speed managed fiber networks for Stamford Public Schools, the City of Norwalk, Seymour Public Schools, Meriden Public Schools, the town of Wethersfield and many other Connecticut schools and public libraries. By focusing on the public sector and small to medium business opportunities the Digital BackOffice has redefined user expectations of network availability, cost of ownership and project delivery. Reliable, 24 x 7 Managed Network Services previously available only to the largest corporations are now available to small business, K-12 schools, public libraries, health care providers and municipalities.
The Digital BackOffice is a business unit of Advanced Corporate Networking, a Milford, Connecticut based business since 1991. “By specializing in niche markets, like education, we have developed expertise and an understanding of the needs of our customers”, said Francis Palacio, a Vice President at Advanced Corporate Networking. “Many public sector computer networks have grown to the size of Fortune 500 corporate networks, but the ratio of support personnel to computer devices is less by a factor of ten. The Digital BackOffice helps our schools and communities bridge the support and services gap and many services qualify for the federal E-rate program”.
