The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) is the largest residential higher education institution in Southern Africa. With campuses located in Tshwane (Pretoria, Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa), Nelspruit, eMalahleni and Polokwane, TUT employs more than 2700 permanent staff members and serves approximately 60,000 students.

Challenges
Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) was formed in 2004 through the merger of three technikons, namely Technikon Northern Gauteng, Technikon North West and Technikon Pretoria. This resulted in a network comprising mostly of iS3000 systems. However, one Campus – Gauteng North – still deployed an Ericsson PBX system.

In 2007, the university decided to integrate all campuses into a single vendor, centralised and managed network to work towards a phased voice over IP (VOIP) migration, with a view to have a fully operational IP network by 2011. The phased approach would accommodate the university’s IP Telephony (IPT) strategy, and reduce administration and management time, resulting in reduced costs for the university.

Stephen Rakgoale, Deputy Director: Communications Infrastructure in ICT Services at TUT, says: “Our university is faculty based, which means the teaching staff are always moving between campuses. Users had to log support calls whenever they moved from one campus to another, which resulted in increased downtime and greater frustrations with staff.”