NetOptions, a Datacom company, today announces it has won a contract to procure ProCurve Networking by HP equipment for the Catholic Education Office in the Diocese of Rockhampton. The deal will underpin the Diocese's aim of bringing all classrooms and learning spaces in its 28 primary schools online.

The new agreement further strengthens NetOptions' relationship with the Diocese and cements the infrastructure and services company's capabilities in the education sector. Upgrading the Catholic Education's existing ProCurve switches with Gigabit transceivers and supplying 80 new devices also deepens ProCurve's relationship with the Diocese.

The Diocesan Catholic Education Office has 28 primary schools and eight secondary colleges across Central Queensland, in a geographic area stretching from Mackay to Bundaberg and west to Longreach.

The Diocese has purchased 28 x 5300 series switches for the administrative centre of each of its primary schools, plus an additional 5300 series switch for two of the largest schools and 50 x 2600 series switches for distribution across school buildings. The purchase is part of the Diocese's Connecting Classrooms initiative, which involves connecting all buildings via fibre optic cable and Cat 5e/6 cabling within buildings in all primary schools to local area networks, to support LAN-based services and internet connectivity.

The procurement places intelligent devices at the edge of each school network rather than just in the administrative centres, to support the development of a Diocesan WAN which will deliver enhanced teaching and learning support. This includes tools such as a collaborative web portal called myInternet, as well as centralised administrative applications, financial management and remote IT maintenance.

Furthermore, the agreement will assist the Diocese in optimising its IT infrastructure by augmenting its existing ProCurve switches and allowing the network to be fully managed at the switch level.

It also allows for old networking equipment to be traded in, to reduce the total cost of the Connecting Classrooms project over time.

The ProCurve procurement contract comes under the Diocesan Catholic Education Office's existing supply agreement with HP for desktop and server infrastructure.

It reflects NetOptions' trusted partnership with the Diocese, through relationships stretching back eight years and covering the provision of both hardware and services.

Jason Ramm, IT Manager with the Catholic Education Office of Rockhampton, comments, "Connecting Classrooms is an ambitious initiative undertaken to deliver advanced functionality and teaching support to our primary classrooms. We will be heavily reliant on this capability across our geographically-dispersed teaching area of some 415,000 square kilometres, so it is essential that our IT infrastructure is absolutely reliable and adequate for the task.

"For this reason, ProCurve and NetOptions are our best choices. While we have solid IT capabilities in house, NetOptions continues to bring value to our projects with equipment, pricing and any other support we may need to ensure we get the best outcomes."

Richard McAlary, Chairman of NetOptions, adds, "We are delighted our relationship with the Diocese continues to go from strength to strength. Over the near-decade that our education account team has worked with the Diocese, its priorities have changed in line with the internet age while our company has grown several hundred percent in size.

"We are proud that throughout this period our specialist expertise and responsive service have ensured we have remained the Diocese's partner of best fit - a relationship that we hope to carry forward for many years into the future."

According to Gurkirat Singh, ProCurve Country Manager, South Pacific, "Over the past three years we have grown much faster than the market, owing to our ability to offer open standards, superior return on IT and investment protection based on the Adaptive EDGE architecture. This means we are now in a position to reach out to our indirect channel partners to help them increase their bottom line."

Shannon Dowden, National Education Manager for NetOptions, adds, "NetOptions has demonstrated a long-term commitment to the education sector. Our strength in providing expert, industry-specific pre and post sales support as well as our strong ties with third party technology vendors were differentiators in this agreement. Our track record with similar contracts was significant in the Diocese's decision to award us this project."

The Diocesan Catholic Education Office and NetOptions signed the purchase agreement in December 2005. The switches were delivered in January 2006 and the implementation program, managed by the Diocese's IT department, will be completed by June.

Connecting Classrooms is estimated to cost approximately $600,000 on completion and has been partially funded by the Queensland State Government's 'Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Capital Assistance Scheme'. The scheme was coordinated through the Office of Non State Education (ONSE) and administered by the Queensland Catholic Education Commission (QCEC) as the Capital Assistance Authority (CAA) for the Catholic sector.