Company:
Marquardt School District 15

Location:
DuPage County, Illinois

Solution:
Network Infrastructure

Objectives
  • Create a powerful network with state-of-the art servers.
  • Facilitate Marquardt's aggressive one-to-one computing project

Marquardt School District 15

Background:

Marquardt School District 15 is rapidly growing and changing. Situated in Glendale Heights in DuPage County, Illinois, the District serves four communities and includes approximately 2,700 students in four elementary schools, as well as Marquardt Middle School.

District 15 is a leader in integrating technology and communication systems into learning environments. The District is committed to using technology as an “authentic learning tool” in classrooms. Administrators chose Pentegra Systems as their IBM business partner because of our extensive technology expertise and our consistent record for delivering effective solutions to the District.

Challenge:

The District’s long-term plan includes implementing unified web-based learning tools for students and teachers. This required thoughtful design and implementation of their data network. To adequately support the ambitious one-to-one computing project, the network would require powerful, state-of-the art servers.

Marquardt developed their system around a private cloud intranet. To function seamlessly with the district’s cloud-based applications and data, each user’s experience and access would have to be identical across devices.

Solution:

To accommodate the ever-increasing computer processing and storage needs of Marquardt’s web-based learning tools, Pentegra Systems collaborated with the District’s IT staff on a selection of robust IBM xSeries servers and the DS series SAN.

We installed innovative and cost-efficient IBM xSeries servers, which offer breakthrough architecture for processor performance, memory capacity, expandability, redundancy and reliability. The xSeries consistently provides the exceptional performance needed to bring District applications into the cloud.

We also consulted with IBM system engineers to ensure the proper and most productive configuration for our client’s needs. Moreover, IBM worked with us to stay within Marquardt’s budget.

Results:

Throughout the school year, the District benefits from Pentegra’s expert installation and system management. It also benefits from IBM xSeries servers and IBM DS storage systems, as well as IBM’s performance, engineering, flexibility, reliability, service and cost effectiveness.

The xSeries 3000 multi processors, expandable memory and hard drives allow the District to preserve their investment, even as processing and storage needs exponentially increase over the years. Their data infrastructure is robust, expandable and flexible to meet future needs. IBM proved to be a reliable and efficient partner, with open standards when Marquardt required servers to have 10Gb connectivity to their existing LAN and WAN.

Since implementation, Marquardt has become a recognized leader for successfully incorporating advanced technology into education. In fact, many District 15 schools have received Academic Excellence Awards for significant student achievement in math and reading test scores.

Standardized systems and centralized management of IBM solutions by Pentegra Systems allows for consistency within the schools, and frees up time for teachers, staff and students to focus on education. The partnership between Marquardt, Pentegra Systems and IBM is strong, as each entity provides an essential component to integrate leading technology with education.

“We are always looking for platforms to fit the application. We were looking for a server to support the Helix Media and couldn’t find anything. Then IBM came out with the X5 and it was like they read our minds. It was a perfect fit.”
Network Administrator
Marquardt School District
“Expandability and the ability to add memory, hard drives and extra processors allow us to increase performance by maintaining our investment.”
Director of Technology
Marquardt School District

Main System Components:

  • MS Server as the base platform
  • MS Lync
  • MS SharePoint
  • MS SQL on replicating IBM xSeries servers (x3750, x3690, x3650, x3550, DS3524)
  • MS Exchange
  • Helix Media server for iTunes

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