How CEnet modernised its data centre to protect learning outcomes, improve resiliency, and scale with demand.
CEnet exists to keep learning communitiesconnected. As a not-for-profit, member-owned organisation supporting Catholic diocesan school communities across Australia, the Catholic Education Network (CEnet) provides educational and business applications, infrastructure, data analytics, and cybersecurity to its members, serving the digital needs of 370,000 students, teachers, and staff across more than 816 schools.
That mission is why modernising the network mattered. As David Jenkins, Infrastructure Manager at CEnet, puts it: “We believe education is the right of all, and our internet and data services are the bedrock on which that vision depends.” CEnet’s services are foundational, and demand is only increasing, with schools’ internet connectivity needs growing 20% year over year.
The challenge: modernise without disruption
CEnet wanted to deliver applications and services to members more quickly and efficiently, and to achieve greater resilience, performance, and operational agility. That meant modernising data centre services, refreshing the primary data centre, and establishing a secondary data centre.
But when you’re supporting schools and education services at scale, 'rip and replace' isn’t a realistic option. The requirement was clear: transform the environment while keeping day-to-day services stable for the communities that rely on them.
The transformation: simplify, automate, and scale
Secure Agility led the end-to-end transformation of CEnet’s infrastructure, simplifying and modernising the network while delivering a resilient, automated, and scalable Juniper-based foundationwith minimal operational disruption.
At the heart of the approach was automation, specifically the adoption of Juniper’s automated data centre solution to improve business resilience, accelerate IT service delivery, and simplify operations by automating fabric operations across highly available data centres. The result was also a significant capacity step-up to meet growing demand for data, applications, and infrastructure services.
From Secure Agility’s perspective, the objective was to reduce complexity while protecting continuity. As Mike Merit, Principal Cyber Solution Architect at Secure Agility, explains: “Our focus was on reducing complexity without compromising continuity – by redesigning the architecture, automating the fabric with Juniper Apstra, and carefullymigrating thousands of legacy configurations, we delivered a network that’s both simpler to run and built for the future.”
The outcomes: faster delivery, stronger foundations
CEnet uses Juniper Apstra Data Center Director to manage the data centre fabric and automate the full lifecycle,from Day 0 design through Day 2 operations. With intent-based networkingand blueprints, the environment is configured accurately from the start and continuously validated against the blueprint to ensure performance. The team gains actionable, real-time insights that help drive strong application experiences.
The network itself is designed to support workload mobility and resilience at scale. CEnet’s high-throughput EVPN-VXLAN fabric enables workload mobility, enhances scalability, optimises resource efficiency, and improves resilience for applications and infrastructure services. At the edge, CEnet uses Juniper MX304 routers to aggregate traffic from member schools, delivering scale and efficiency in space- and power-constrained environments as bandwidth demand continues to rise.
Operationally, the benefits are measurable. Provisioning network services can now be completed in minutes, compared with4–8 hours for manual changes (including travel). For education communities that depend on reliable access to digital learning services, this shift matters because every improvement in speed and resilience improves continuity.
Ultimately, CEnet's modernised data centre fabric supports what comes next: advancing innovative services such as cechat,“the human-centred, AI-powered platform where educators create and control their own custom teaching and administrative agents.” The network is no longer a constraint - it’s an enabler.
Read the full case study here:
