Spokane Public Schools Selects AirWave to Deploy and Manage District Wide Wireless Network in Time for the Coming School Year
San Mateo, CA - June 22, 2006 – AirWave Wireless Inc., the leader in wireless network management and security, today announced that Spokane Public Schools in Spokane, Washington, has selected the AirWave Management Platform™ (AMP) wireless network management solution to configure, monitor, and secure the district’s growing WiFi network, providing services to over 34,000 students, teachers, and administrative staff.
Spokane Public Schools’ plan is to rapidly expand their wireless network beginning this summer to cover all of the district’s schools and support buildings. AirWave will enable them to build out a secure, effective wireless network in a narrow timeframe with the ability to manage it centrally and efficiently.
“In order for our students and educators to fully benefit from computer technology and the Internet, we need an efficient wireless network that can easily be maintained and managed,“ said Richard Paasch, Network Operations Analyst at Spokane Schools. “We want to run a world-class wireless network, and to do that we need a world-class professional wireless LAN utility which is why we chose the AirWave Management Platform.”
”We’re excited to partner with such a prestigious district on one of the nation’s largest planned WLAN deployments,” said Greg Murphy, AirWave chief operating officer. “AirWave’s AMP software solution is ideal for complex wireless network environments with numerous locations, thousands of access points and multiple vendors. With AirWave, Spokane Public Schools now has the ability to add a second network to their system without the need to increase IT staff, allowing for more efficient network planning and growth.”
Spokane Public Schools currently has around 200 wireless access points deployed and plans to increase that number to more than 800, expanding coverage throughout the entire school system. “We got our feet wet growing to our current size,” said Paasch. “One of the things we learned was that a wireless LAN is not like a wired LAN in many ways, and managing it with existing resources is not easy. We concluded that we had to have a great management tool if we were going to expand the network without adding more staff.”
“We chose AMP over our initial proprietary management solution because we needed something better. AirWave gave us real-time monitoring of our network, down to the level of the individual user or the individual AP. It is easy to use, and unlike vendor-specific tools, gives us the flexibility to adopt different hardware in the future. Without it, I wouldn’t be sure we’d meet our goals to extend the wireless network throughout the school system. Now I am.”
In addition to the extra features in AirWave’s product, AirWave’s customer support sealed the deal for Spokane. “We manage everything from phones to switches to servers in our group,” said Paasch. “We will never have enough staff to develop all the in-house expertise we need, so we rely heavily on our vendors. AirWave’s support was great. They helped us on both hardware and software aspects of our WLAN, were responsive and easy to work with. That was really key to us.”
“If we had known at the start of this wireless project what we know today about what is needed to manage a wireless LAN, we would have gone with AirWave straight off.”
AMP is available direct from AirWave and through select resellers. Special discounts for educational institutions are available. For more information please visit www.airwave.com.
About AirWave
AirWave Wireless, Inc. is the leading developer of network management software solutions that provide administrators a single point of intelligent control to monitor, analyze, and configure their wireless network infrastructure. The privately held company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and is backed by investors Westbury Equity Partners, Ignition Partners and Idealab. The company's patent-pending AirWave Management Platform™ software is sold through a global network of value-added resellers and systems integrators. For more information, visit the company's website at www.airwave.com.