NIWA Chooses Xirrus For High Performance Wireless

New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Chooses Xirrus For High Performance Wireless Connectivity

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -- (Marketwire) -- Dec 12, 2012 -- Xirrus®, the leader in high-performance wireless networks, today announced that NIWA has deployed Xirrus Wireless Arrays in a drive to modernise its wireless infrastructure. The deployment enables researchers to better collaborate with colleagues across different NIWA sites, as well as providing a seamless Wi-Fi experience for staff and visitors.

NIWA is New Zealand's leading natural resources and environmental science provider. Its mission is to conduct research projects that enable the sustainable management of natural resources for New Zealand and the planet. The organisation is also charged with providing a deeper understanding of climate and atmosphere issues, and increasing New Zealanders' resilience to weather and climate hazards.

Arian de Wit, General Manager of Information Technology at NIWA, said: "This type of environmental science is a collaborative endeavour. Multi-disciplinary project teams are pulled together from across any of our 15 locations across the country, making strong inter-site network connections critical to our work. Additionally, staff move between sites frequently and require a seamless connectivity experience across laptops, tablets and smartphones."

NIWA decided that a wireless solution would provide the best balance between cost, speed and convenience. Additionally, some NIWA sites are based in marine aquaculture areas where corrosion of wired network connectors is an issue, making wireless a more suitable option.

Describing the selection process, de Wit commented: "Our strategy was to provide seamless and ubiquitous access across all our larger sites. Xirrus was the natural choice to deliver on this in comparison to other vendors. They were able to meet our capacity and bandwidth requirements while offering comprehensive, centralised management of the network."

The unique architecture of the Xirrus solution provides four times the coverage of traditional access points, and up to eight times the bandwidth and capacity. This is ideal for enabling seamless connectivity, while providing the bandwidth to manage the high-volume data transfers typical of a research environment.

While greater connectivity is a good enabler for collaborative research, it exposes the network to new devices and applications that need to be managed. NIWA uses Xirrus Application Control to manage wireless traffic at the network edge. This allows the IT team to optimise the user experience by prioritising critical applications, restricting usage of bandwidth-heavy applications and blocking threats. Using this feature, NIWA can ensure a safer, seamless network across all sites.

The deployment of Xirrus' wireless infrastructure has allowed staff to collaborate and work flexibly across NIWA sites by enabling a high-performance wireless connection for mobile devices and some scientific equipment. Staff no longer need to adjust their Wi-Fi settings or authenticate at each location. They can also access collaboration tools and information from meeting rooms and common areas, enabling connected meetings to take place.

In the future, NIWA plans to extend the Xirrus wireless network even further. "We hope to introduce wireless connectivity to our main research vessel, Tangaroa. By deploying a Wi-Fi link across the harbour when the vessel is in port, we can make it easier to offload data back to the office," said de Wit.

Sean Larner, VP International at Xirrus, said: "NIWA plays an extremely important role as New Zealand's leading natural resources and environmental science provider. We have been pleased to see how our wireless solution is boosting collaboration and access to online information, helping NIWA to meet its core purpose. We look forward to working with them as they develop more innovative uses of Xirrus wireless to assist them in carrying out this important work."

About Xirrus, Inc.

Xirrus is the leading provider of high-performance wireless networks. Our array-based solutions perform under the most demanding circumstances -- always. 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. For more information, visit www.xirrus.com.

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