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Connectivity to support a global vision

Describing itself as “Scotland’s international university”, Heriot-Watt University – which has 30,000 students in campuses across the UK, Dubai and Malaysia –  has an ambitious, global vision. When it came to setting up a brand new campus in Putrajaya, Malaysia – Heriot-Watt’s fifth – director of information services Mike Roch knew good connectivity would be paramount. Prior experience taught him it would also be a challenge. So it initially proved: when the university set up a temporary campus in 2012, it had to rely on a 4G mobile connection from state-owned Telekom Malaysia, the only provider.  “It didn’t give us real-time connectivity, it didn’t give us file-sharing and it was barely adequate for the occasional Skype conference,” he says.

Instead of settling on a 100Mb business broadband circuit, Jisc proposed another option for connectivity on Heriot-Watt University’s campus in Putrajaya. The campus is now able to exploit the quality of connectivity to deliver cloud-based services such as the VLE and Office365.

Curious to read more about Jisc’s involvement? Read the full story on the In The Field blog.

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