Education industry taking giant strides in going Digital

In a chat with VARINDIA, Raghuveer HR, Director Sales, Dimension Data India talks about the recent deployment at Vidya Mandir Society, the challenges, how education industry is going digital and the cyber security protection provided by Dimension Data 

Give us a brief about the recent deployment at Birla High School, a part of Vidya Mandir Society. 

This is one of those case studies which is refreshingly different from Indian context. The reason I'm saying that because the way this institution has been working towards imparting education, trying to make it more agile, more interesting for students to adopt, and at the same time also being in tune with time. 

Birla High School and various other colleges come under the ambit of Vidya Mandir Society. They have three schools and few colleges. With all the schools, we have deployed ICT infrastructure. One of the newer deployments that we have is in a location called Mukundapur, it is currently almost under completion and it is partially live. They wanted to approach education from a different perspective, where they say why cannot we make either the curriculum or students future ready because today, we are all talking about digital and in the era of digital how do we ensure to impart education and also imbibe the overall digital diaspora in accordance. All the students are given tablets and the institution is completely digital.   

Dimension Data is tasked to ensure that the overall infrastructure is made available. It involves the local area network, wide area network which is the internet connectivity. It also requires the various other infrastructure requirements like a compute and the cyber security layer. In local area network, from an infrastructure point of view, we have used managed switches. We have given an infrastructure which is remotely managed through local delivery center. We have deployed the local area network and also wireless connectivity. There is a central controller were we manage it through Global Delivery Center in Bangalore.

In wireless, apart from providing connectivity, it is also about making policies and also putting wrap of security layer around it. So, in short the infrastructure which is completely wireless with the compute layer and wrap of cyber security, all centrally managed and we ensure that there is a seamless connectivity and an experience given to the students and the teachers.

During the deployment did you did you face any challenges? 
This is something that Dimension Data has been doing for years. While, it might look completely futuristic, this is something that we have been doing for many years. Normally, if you are doing folk list there could be certain impediments that you might come across but it was a green field, it was completely an open ticket for us. That is why we were able to scale and deploy this futuristic technology without too much of any issues per say. 

When it comes to education, how do you see it is moving towards digital transformation? 
This is one area where Indian educational institutions are partaking giant strikes. They have come through the fact that they need to attract the right talent, if they need to impart the right education and also be competing with other like minded institutions. This is one area from an Indian context where I see almost all Universities are embarking on digital and undertaking giant strides in this field.   

How are you providing cyber security protection to Vidya Mandir Society?
Dimension Data is the largest service integrator when it comes to cyber security. Cyber security includes the perimeter security, endpoint security, the application security and security operations. We have the complete stack, we play across. It is not only about delivering products, it is also about managing and delivering services around these areas across the entire spectrum of security. Some of the most high profile or large corporations, both from a private and the public sector, the security operations are either deployed or managed by us. So I think it is fair to say we are one of the largest cyber security players in the country and that has been always been our focus or area and also our area of strength. 

And that's how we have been able to demonstrate and also deploy some of these solutions in Birla High School, because today when you are dealing with content, ensuring it safe and mitigated from external or internal threats is also a key requirement that the institution had and we have been able to provide solutions to ensure those are rightly managed with policies around it so that there is no breach of either the data or security.     

So, similar to this deployment, have you done any other deployment? 
We have done similar deployments; wireless in many institutions be it on the computer level on providing managed services to some of the education institutions along with the security posture. But if you say similar kind of solutions, there are a few within the country we have also deployed. 

What is your take on this, anything you want to highlight about this deployment?
The key aspect is Birla High School imparts education from pre nursery. It is very heartening to see an institution which is going digital and providing education on the digital platform. 

This is absolutely futuristic. We are extremely proud that we are enabling Birla High School to impart education in the digital media.  

The students can pick up things very fast, if we are able to give them an opportunity to dabble with technology in a very safe and secure environment and at the same time give them the opportunity to broaden their perspective, it comes better than that. 

To inform students and future citizens of the country who are digitally strong and knows the pros and cons, more importantly handling the digital media in a very safe and secure environment is the need of the hour. This is what we have provided to the school.