Case Study: Metro Tech achieves 88% less staff effort and lower TCO while managing more devices with Fortinet

Metro Tech Network Team Can Manage More Devices with 88% Less Staff Effort and Lower TCO

Metro Technology Centers, a vocational education network in Oklahoma City serving about 1,900 high‑school and 35,000 adult students across eight sites, faced a risky, hard‑to‑manage multi‑vendor network with misconfigured firewalls, switches, and access points. Because learning depends on reliable, compliant IT, the district needed to simplify management, tighten security, and reduce costs while protecting OT/IoT systems and student data.

Metro Tech deployed the Fortinet Security Fabric—including FortiGate NGFWs, FortiSwitch, FortiAP, FortiManager and FortiEDR—standardizing segmentation and centralized management. The result: one person now manages nearly three times as many devices with 88% less staff effort (down from eight to one), APs grew from 120 to ~520, helpdesk tickets fell ~50%, annual support costs dropped about one‑third (~$300K to ~$200K), routine tasks take seconds, and the Fortinet stack blocks some 32 million DDoS attacks daily with no successful breaches in five years.

Metro Tech

Indrit Vucaj

Director, IT and Data Management