Transforming digital learning for 34,000 students and educators for Aberdeen City Council

Despite the ambition, the council’s legacy network lacked the capacity and coverage to support 1:1 learning for 26,500 students, or scalable cloud connectivity to simplify network operations.  Put simply it wasn’t fit for purpose.

This presented serious limitations:

• Network congestion: Schools had older wireless networks that couldn’t support the 1:1 learner-to-device ratio required.
• Operational inefficiency: Troubleshooting and upgrades required high manual input and were time-consuming.
• Security: the IT team wanted to strengthen security, working toward Zero Trust network access controls to cater for the huge increase in network usage, and integrate with other apps like ServiceNow.

The council needed a partner who could not only deliver technical expertise but also achieve a seamless and secure network transformation across a highly distributed estate, including 67 schools and 100 corporate sites.

What difference did we make?

The new Juniper AI-Native Network, deployed by Roc Technologies, delivered outstanding improvements.

• Created state of the art learning environments: Teachers reported immediate improvements in classroom connectivity. Where once only a handful of learners could connect at once, now entire classrooms access digital resources seamlessly.
• Operational excellence: Network-related tickets were eliminated—a 100% reduction. Real-time AI-driven insights and automation accelerated problem resolution and minimized downtime.
• Security and compliance at scale: By adopting a Zero Trust approach with Juniper Mist Access Assurance, Aberdeen City Council achieved stronger security for both school-issued and personal devices.
• Sustainability and scalability: Despite doubling the number of access points and significantly increasing network capacity, the solution used less power than the legacy infrastructure—supporting both green goals and future growth.