THOUSAND OAKS, CA--(Marketwire - Apr 24, 2012) - Xirrus®, the leader in high-performance wireless networks, announced today that the award-winning Griffin-Spalding School District in Georgia has deployed Xirrus Wireless Arrays in more than 20 schools throughout the district. Most recently, Griffin-Spalding was selected for Georgia's top school system award for large districts, in a state that ranked 7th in the United States for overall education quality. With the increasingly popular bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend coupled with a rapidly growing number of teachers using mobile devices as learning tools, like thousands of other educational institutions around the world, Griffin-Spalding implemented the Xirrus solution to ensure students and teachers alike have reliable access to Wi-Fi whenever needed.
"We have more than 20 schools in our district, and our teachers and students rely on Wi-Fi to accomplish their work," said Dr. Curtis Jones, superintendent of the Griffin-Spalding School District. "We knew that the evolving nature of Wi-Fi would require us to prepare for our future with a scalable wireless infrastructure now. We wanted a thoroughly reliable network that worked within our budget and could be easily managed -- a solution we found using Xirrus. Our new deployment means that teachers are now able to perform critical applications that promote student learning on their mobile devices."
Before implementing Xirrus, Griffin-Spalding tried installing conventional two-radio Wi-Fi access points in an effort to scale to meet the wireless demand created by the influx of smart-devices.
"We carefully reviewed other wireless options and even tried some 'home-grown' solutions of our own. After much analysis, we selected Xirrus for its ability to deliver the comprehensive wireless solution we needed while requiring only half the equipment of competing solutions," said Rod Smith, director of technology and communications, Griffin-Spalding School District. "Faculty and students can now rest assured that the wireless network is fully capable of supporting the growing density of devices connecting to the network. With the Xirrus implementation, we've managed to stay ahead of the technology curve."
Top of the Class In Education
Schools worldwide are struggling with the onslaught of smart devices overwhelming current school systems' wireless networks. Combined with the new wave of teachers who are using laptops, iPad-type tablets, and smart phones as vehicles for conducting lesson plans, the need for a reliable wireless network has evolved as a top priority.
"The threat of budget cuts, increases in student populations, and the escalation of technology-based learning tools are driving huge demand in the education market for wireless solutions," said Steven Wastie, chief marketing officer at Xirrus. "We've worked with thousands of schools to provide the best-performing wireless solutions capable of scaling to meet any demand. Supported by Xirrus Arrays, our educational system customers are instantly able to offer cutting-edge technology programs, engage students in different ways, and allow educators to leverage the newest teaching tools in the industry."
"At our school, more and more students were coming to us wanting Wi-Fi, more importantly, simply expecting it to be there and running at a high performance level, 100 percent of the time," said Phil Quinn, ICT manager at New College Swindon in the United Kingdom. "The transition to the new wireless network has been successful. We took one classroom with 20 heavily used PCs and installed wireless cards. We didn't tell anyone, just put them in, left the cables in place, turned off the switch, and waited to see what fallout there might be. And there wasn't any. Students and staff didn't notice any difference and assumed the PCs were physically connected, which is testament to the reliability and performance of Xirrus Wireless Arrays."
Xirrus offers high-performance Wi-Fi that has provided thousands of schools with a reliable, scalable, secure, and financially smart solution. During 2011, Xirrus worked with hundreds of primary and secondary schools around the world, bolstering its position as the leading provider of Wi-Fi for the education market.
"We have always been in the forefront of embracing wireless technology in our district. By selecting Xirrus, we have been able to expand our personalized learning initiative, providing our students with access to whatever technology-based applications they need to be successful. Xirrus has been integral in allowing us to accelerate our technology-driven learning programs," said Grace Magley, director of Educational Technology, Millis Public Schools in Massachusetts.
"After evaluating the Xirrus solution we noticed that it would take about 80 percent fewer access points to deploy across our district, giving us a great cost savings," said Dan Armstrong, director of technical support services at Plano Independent School District in Texas. "Xirrus greatly reduced our infrastructure costs and we continue to see substantial maintenance and operations savings to our year-to-year budgets."
For more information please visit: http://www.xirrus.com/Solutions/Industry/Primary-Education/Primary-Education
About Xirrus, Inc.
Xirrus is the leading provider of high-performance wireless networks. Our array-based solutions perform under the most demanding circumstances -- always. Their wired-like reliability and superior security allow our customers to confidently take their business-critical applications and operations mobile. Our solutions are unique in the industry, transforming enterprises and organizations around the world. At a time when everyone expects to connect wirelessly everywhere and business is increasingly done in the cloud, Xirrus wireless solutions are providing a vital strategic business and IT infrastructure advantage in thousands of deployments worldwide. Headquartered in Thousand Oaks, CA, Xirrus is a privately held enterprise designing and manufacturing its products and solutions in the USA.
Xirrus and XR-Series are trademarks or registered trademarks of Xirrus. Other trade names used in this document are or may be the property of their respective owners.