Case Study: Niederrhein Municipal Computer Center (KRZN) achieves secure, scalable school-wide Wi‑Fi and centralized management with HPE Aruba Networking

Aruba provides comprehensive, secure Wi-Fi for administration and teaching at schools in North Rhine-Westphalia

Kommunales Rechenzentrum Niederrhein (KRZN), a municipal data‑centre serving local governments, supports IT for roughly 450 schools with about 200,000 pupils and 8,000 teachers. Schools demanded comprehensive, high‑availability Wi‑Fi that supports BYOD and specific apps, enforces secure authentication and logging, provides enough bandwidth across buildings and outdoor areas, and—crucially—can be managed centrally from the KRZN’s own data centre for data‑protection reasons (cloud was not acceptable).

KRZN deployed Aruba 802.11ac 200/300 series access points with Aruba AirWave for on‑premises management and Aruba ClearPass for policy‑based access control. The rollout (400+ APs in 20+ schools so far) delivers stable, high‑performance coverage, separate networks for administration/teaching/BYOD, device‑ and app‑level policies, easy in‑place scaling (e.g., swapping 200→300 series where needed) and full compliance with data‑protection rules—receiving strong positive feedback and paving the way for wider expansion.

Niederrhein Municipal Computer Center (KRZN)

Andreas Zboralski

Niederrhein Municipal Computer Center (KRZN)