Network Uniformity across Sites

“Proud to be associated with Untangle®.”

Background

Western Seminary is not far off from your average university when it comes to network and IT needs. The standard constraints of time and money are as visible for Western Seminary as for any other institution, large and small, in today’s economy. This graduate school is comprised of three small sites with three big needs for uniformity. The main campus, located in Portland, and the two satellite sites, located in Northern California, serve approximately 250 users. Staff and faculty in the remote sites had very limited access to central resources, such as the student records database. Needing to deliver consistent service to all three sites motivated Valerie Mainridge, Director of IT, and Bob Baumann, Network Administrator to find a remedy, and fast.

Renew vs Re-evaluate

With annual decreases in IT budgets and increases in the need for network protection, Valerie and Bob had their work cut out for them. They needed an affordable solution that would allow them consistency across the campuses while keeping a private and safe user experience online. Untangle’s free openVPN was the main draw for Bob, as it allowed him to grant access to centralized records and resources, to all sites. However, he then tried out Untangle’s eSoft web filter, finding it delivered the web content filtering protection he needed at a much lower investment. He re-evaluated his options, and decided against renewing his incumbent web filtering solution. By moving his security solution to Untangle he gained a balanced, secure solution at a portion of the price, across all three sites.

When IT Issues Call

With miles between sites, Valerie and Bob also found the Untangle solution simple and straight forward when it came to providing desktop support. Having the ability to remotely connect into a network, diagnose a problem and fix it without ever leaving the main campus has become an even bigger blessing than originally anticipated. The time and money saved has been material. They have high hopes that this will be recognized as the “go-to” model for desktop support throughout all three sites.

Untangle is providing Western Seminary with web filtering, virus blocking, and all the while allowing graduate level students to be successful in remote locations. Bob commented, “I am proud to be associated with Untangle.” Being in the business of protecting students and web users from harmful content, we believe this to be the ultimate compliment.