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Network Security
Delivering Slices of Network Securely at USC
6/27/2008
At each level of evaluation, products were discarded. That is, until the team tried an Array Networks SPX 3000 Series Universal Access Controller. The IT group met with Array to explain its needs and do a "sanity check," said Nelson. "We wanted to make sure that what we were hearing was really true."
Intrigued by what they learned, ISI arranged a purchase order to set up a 30-day evaluation period on hardware from Array. As Nelson described it, one "guy took the unit home and plugged it in to see how it would work. The product worked out of the box the way it was supposed to."
"The results were positive," said Nelson. Not only did the hardware work as advertised, but ISI was impressed by the support it received. "When we've had questions to meet our unique needs--they've made engineering staff available to us. Sometimes, the Array product is so comprehensive, it's a matter of them explaining to us how it works and how to make use of the features they have in there. Sometimes, there may be a feature that doesn't work the way we expect it to. They're able to agree with us and quickly make a modification of the code that will get the feature working the way we thought it should work."
Nelson said he paid in the "five figures" for the controller, but that the price wasn't so high that it exceeded his budget approval threshold. "I was able to make the purchase without having to go [to the CIO] and do all those types of presentations."
The controller sits between the MyPortal servers, which are fairly locked down, and the publicly accessible IP space that allows ISI's researchers to collaborate with others around the world. Its function is to protect those MyPortal servers akin to how corporate servers are secured--only allowing a certain set of users to access them. This allows access to those servers to be more restrictive, said Nelson, than the rest of the ISI infrastructure.
Now, other groups on campus are considering the use of MyPortal to address their research administration. "We don't want people to go out and spend their development dollars to use a resource that we feel might have applicability to them," Nelson said. "Lots of academic units are smaller. They have more limited resources. When they can make use of a resource without having to develop it, they can focus their limited resources on other things--it's a win for them."
Nelson compares what ISI is accomplishing to an application service provider that needs to offer services to a customer but doesn't want that customer to have access to anything other than the application they're provisioning for. "When you're budget limited and you have need for something that's going to work out of the box and will require technical expertise to get it going, Array is a really good choice," said Nelson. "It's competitively priced and the support we've gotten has been world-class.
Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.
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