The University of Denver (DU) tapped Nile for its as-a-service approach to campus networking in recognition of the fact that networking is no longer the strategic differentiator it was in the past.

Modern networking is more similar to a utility-based model, DU Vice Chancellor and CIO Russell Kaurloto told SDxCentral. “While this change has dynamically occurred, the traditional network vendors are still mired in their ‘lifecycle’ replacement and maintenance fee cost model. Frankly, IT leaders are tired and frustrated of going to their boards asking for millions in capital expenditure to replace end-of-life network gear and then the project replacement and disruptions for a technology that has become a basic utility,” Kaurloto said.

Many individuals have cable modems at their houses, for example. They don’t own the modem, but they can manage it. And when it breaks, the company replaces it as part of the subscription model.

“Amazon Web Services has a subscription-based cloud model, where I don’t own it; I don’t worry about end-of-life or upgrades – so why not the same in networking? Thus a NaaS solution and Nile,” Kaurloto said.

Specifically, the dorms across DU’s 125-acre campus needed a WIFI network upgrade that addressed the university’s security and deployment challenges. By moving away from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Aruba for wireless connectivity and Cisco for wired switching, DU found a better cost model and management solution in Nile’s Secure Access network-as-a-service (NaaS) offering.

From site survey to installation, Nile led the entire deployment of both wired and wireless networks across two residence halls housing more than 1,000 students.

“This was the perfect scenario for us to test the Nile solution to its fullest extent without any disruption to the main campus network,” Kaurloto said. “This deployment was a proving ground for a NaaS solution, and Nile met all of our needs and requirements and exceeded performance measures.”

After the initial deployment, Nile and DU began deploying the network on the main campus, a process that took just two weeks. DU plans to begin a full-scale deployment across the entire campus soon – including the university’s mountain campus located at 8,000 feet above sea level a few hours’ drive from Denver, Colorado.

“We were very early adopters with Nile, so the challenge of deploying a network in a very harsh and remote area was a real challenge for Nile, but we systematically worked through all the back-end engineering to a successful outcome, thus the decision to proceed across our main campus,” Kaurloto said. “Our end-user experience has been completely seamless, and we are running at five 9’s – no different than a traditional premier network install, but without the overhead, engineering, internal support and at less cost.”

Nile’s NaaS solution is also in use at other universities like the Stanford University Computer Science Lab, University of Missouri-Kansas, Winston-Salem State University and Johnson C. Smith University.

Nile claims to be uniquely positioned to support artificial intelligence (AI) in the enterprise network environment, and the vendor touts its use of AI throughout the network design and deployment process. “We were able to build our service offering for the cloud era using a blank slate,” Nile Chief Product Officer and Co-founder Suresh Katukam told SDxCentral.

Nile offers one standard network design, though each deployment has its own deterministic model – a vertically integrated data model that provides real-time observability and a mix of virtual and physical sensors that continuously monitor more than 1,000 distinct variables.

“This architecture provides the clean, contextual data that powers Nile's AI automation,” which “extends from Day 0 (design and installation) throughout the lifecycle of the network,” Katukam said.

While designing the network, Nile’s AI identifies the best location to install hardware infrastructure based on the existing network and performance requirements. Nile automatically keeps a digital copy of the most optimized network topology to validate against the actual network installation project. And the vendor automatically creates a shopping list, or bill of materials, with everything IT teams will need to implement the network.

Once the network is up and running, Nile uses AI to deliver closed-loop automation and ensure that interoperability of devices and infrastructure is optimized without IT team intervention. This means the network itself remains in a best practices state to deliver performance, coverage, capacity and availability guarantees.

“This is not hyperbole,” Katukam said. “Nile puts these guarantees into its [service level agreements] SLAs and faces financial penalties if we do not meet them.”

Nile also says it uses AI to continuously fine tune the network performance, including by pushing software updates, “tackling trouble tickets in case of proactive detection of service level deviations” and “automating requests for additional capacity and hardware refreshes,” he said.

Those tasks are all accomplished without any effort from IT staff. “As a result of this AI integration, Nile's customers have a significant reduction in the need for network management,” Katukam said.