The Zurich International School (ZIS) was founded in 2001 through the merger of the

American International School of Zurich and the International Primary School of Zurich. It is a leading non-profit day school with a comprehensive educational programme for pupils aged 3 to 18 years. Its more than 1200 pupils are spread out among the locations of Wädenswil (Lower School), Kilchberg (Middle School) and Adliswil (Upper School). For the 2022/23 school year, the Middle School will move into a new building directly next to the modern Upper School in Adliswil.

The ZIS uses state-of-the-art technology in its classes. As a “1:1 school” it makes a tablet computer available to each student. There is wifi Internet everywhere. The classroom teachers work with interactive boards and displays from the company SMART Technologies. The school operates two data centres in Wädenswil and Adliswil, but by now already around 90% of the IT resources are cloud-based. The apps from Google Workspace are standard tools.

For its high-tech learning environment, in 2005 the ZIS was looking for a provider that could equip all its locations with fibre optics and connect them with broadband. UPC Business offered the ideal solution package and prevailed against strong competition.

The initial package included providing all locations with fibre optics, IP-VPN with voice prioritising, and SDSL backup at all locations (up to 200 Mbit/s), a central Internet connection (200 Mbit/s) and an SIP trunk for IP telephony at the headquarters in Wädenswil.

In the following years the package was expanded and refined and the performance enhanced. Further additions were Ethernet Services, Wholesale Dark Fiber and Mobile Device Management (Cisco Meraki) for about 500 iPads. In the time in between the bandwidths for Business VPN and Business Internet were increased to 500 Mbit/s. Just recently they were increased to 2 Gbit/s. All fibre optic connections are physically redundant (Y-redundancy for main and backup connection). When the new Middle School has been completed in 2022, Adliswil will become the main location for the data centre. To achieve the highest possible availability for the data services, the campus is being connected geo-redundantly.

For fixed-network telephony (Business Voice IP-PBX), 30 voice channels are available. In the event of a service outage, voice traffic is redirected via the mobile network.

Because the IT team of the ZIS strives to equip the teachers and pupils with cutting edge technology, and the network is used intensively during lessons, UPC regularly sought dialogue with the customer in order to identify its needs and pro-actively develop suggestions for optimisation. Particular attention was given to the scalability of the solution to ensure that the customer can always get their desired performance.

As of: October 2020