Universities are prime places for cloud services to do a bit of testing all their own.  The latest scholarly team up is between Dell and Northern Arizona University, which have successfully deployed its SafeConnect NAC, thus replacing an old Cisco Clean Access NAC installation (the Cisco NAC Applicance’s former name).  It’s another lose for Cisco, which is undergoing a few directional shifts in its product strategy and line-up.

For Dell, however, it’s an opportunity towards expansion, with 2011 marking a big year for its cloud services.  The new cloud technology provided by Dell has reportedly brought with it some very notable improvements, including, among others, a ten-hour reduction of unexpected downtime per month, 3 active servers compared to the previous 21, and doubled NAC capacity. This capacity now stands at 20,000 devices.  some additional features include the following:

“50 hours/month reclaimed for IT staff on NAC administration and maintenance

• 20-30 hours/week reclaimed for student help desk workers due to improved solution design,
• 50 percent reduction in NAC-related help desk calls during back-to-school (move-in) week,
• 97 percent reduction in wait time (from 90 days to 2 days) for support of new software and devices.”

In addition to these benefits, Dell was also highlighted in the release as the university’s tech partner who recommended Impulse Point’s SafeConncet. Incidentally, Impulse has a Dell Preferred Partner status. Either way, these 2 companies are not the only ones trying to gain market share in the academic cloud.

Computer Weekly reports Loughborough University signed a deal with Logicalis to design and build it a bespoke hybrid private cloud, which will be integrated with a shared, hosted one located off-site. The deal to replace the university’s 40 years old infrastructure also includes unified communications and collaboration software for the 3,000 staff members, as well as a virtual desktop infrastructure integrated across the university’s corporate desktops.

In addition to the academic cloud, Dell has been active in the gaming space as well. The company announced a partnership to provide cloud hardware for GameString’s new Arcade Server just last week.