The Manchester College integrates and connects its 15 sites with a Next Generation Network to enable students and staff with access to secure email, administration systems and multimedia e-learning applications

Published 11th March 2010

The Manchester College, a new institution created by the merger of City College Manchester (CCM) and Manchester College of Arts and Technology (MANCAT), will integrate and connect its 15 sites with a Next Generation Network from Virgin Media Business. Once completed, the Wide Area Network (WAN) will enable 80,000 students and 3,000 staff to access secure email and administration systems as well as multimedia e-learning applications to support their studies, such as the open source course management system Moodle.

Formed in 2008, The Manchester College is one of the largest Further Education (FE) institutions in Europe with an annual budget of £180 million. It provides specialist teaching and learning facilities for adults, young people aged between 14 and 19 years old and employers. With sites across Manchester, from Moston and Harpurhey in the north to Wythenshawe and West Didsbury in the south, the college needed to link its locations and interconnect its two legacy ICT systems. The WAN will form the backbone connection for the recently merged institution.

“Innovation is key to the delivery of our strategic objectives, and the innovative development of learning technologies is an area of priority,” said Marie Gilluley, Senior Vice Principal at The Manchester College. “To maintain our reputation for learning technology expertise following the merger, we needed the right networking foundations in place. This network had to support communication between two separate systems until the colleges’ procedures and infrastructures were fully amalgamated.

“Virgin Media Business has enabled us to continue to innovate through e-learning by providing a reliable, easy to upgrade infrastructure, which will accommodate further growth and changes to structure.”

The Ethernet Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides 1 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) connections to the Northenden and Openshaw campuses and 100 Megabit-per-second (Mbps) connections to all other sites. Staff and students will have fast and reliable access to information and applications wherever they are based.

“With FE Colleges under increasing pressure to pool resources, mergers could become increasingly prevalent,” said Mark Smith, head of public sector, north, at Virgin Media Business. “When colleges join forces, it is vital that a reliable and resilient infrastructure is in place to ensure it is business as usual for staff and students. By working closely with The Manchester College and designing a network that will accommodate its needs for today and the foreseeable future, we’ve ensured that it continues to lead the way with technical innovation.”


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About Virgin Media Business

Virgin Media Business is the UK’s only telco with a nationwide fibre optic Next Generation Network. Launched in February 2010, the company aims to bring the Virgin philosophy to the business telecoms market. Providing innovative, high quality solutions built on brilliant customer service.

Virgin Media Business is the largest business-to-business brand in the Virgin group. With a strong product portfolio that includes its market leading Ethernet services. It uses its network asset in order to create bespoke tailored telecoms solutions for its customers. Employees are located at 40 offices across the UK, allowing Virgin Media Business to be closer to its customers in every sense.

Previously known as ntl:Telewest Business, organisations working with Virgin Media Business include London City Airport, Arqiva, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Partnership and South West Water.

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