Updated: August 04, 2025
The client had 14 campuses. Each with its own floor plan, power grid quirks, and switching stack. The ask was simple: replace the fragmented access layer with Catalyst 9300. What they needed was end-to-end network visibility, fail-safe uptime, and policy enforcement across buildings, labs, and shared workspaces.
Proactive didn’t quote boxes. We delivered operational uniformity.
Indian enterprise campuses aren’t homogeneous. No two access closets behave the same. When you standardize access switching across sites, the switch model is the easy part. The PoE loads, L1 inconsistencies, and downstream config sprawl are what derail most rollouts.
We began with heat maps, PoE capacity against device churn, and existing uplink oversubscription rates. Then we built a rollout schedule that avoided the common trap - config cloning. Every switch wasn’t just tested. It was profiled for failure conditions specific to its site.
The client was running over 120 VLANs across sites, many of them orphaned, with overlapping IDs. This wasn’t a cleanup. It was a risk. Catalyst 9300’s support for SD-Access meant we could flatten segmentation across users and devices, tied to roles, not ports.
We collapsed VLAN sprawl into 32 segments. Reduced breach surface by 68 per cent. Enabled zero-touch provisioning via DNA Center. And made mobility seamless across campus networks, without any lateral policy compromise.
Too many 9300 deployments in India start with a SKU mismatch. Buying 9300L for access rooms that need high-throughput uplinks or stacking the wrong model where you need StackWise-480 ends up burning both budget and time.
We scoped 9300, 9300L, 9300X, and 9350, where they made sense. 90W PoE was reserved for AI cameras and Wi-Fi 6E APs. Modular uplinks were used only where expansion was forecast within 12 months. Clients didn’t overspend. They scaled smart.
We didn’t just automate the rollout. We structured policy inheritance, tested TrustSec behaviours across boundary VLANs, and used Application Hosting to simulate workload shifts across racks. DNA Center gave us the control plane. Our NOC gave it continuity.
Every config pushed was monitored post-deployment with NetFlow, Syslog, and Encrypted Traffic Analytics. Clients saw performance anomalies before users logged tickets. That's not support. That's predictive uptime.
Many Gold Partners sell switches. Few build architecture. Fewer stay accountable after install. Proactive Data Systems is built to do all three.
We don’t deploy until we:
You don’t need more ports. You need a consistent user experience. That’s what we engineer.
The client’s IT team saw a 42 per cent drop in incident frequency. They resolved outages 61 percent faster. Compliance reporting became a one-click exercise, not a quarterly war room.
That’s the real outcome of a well-architected Catalyst 9300 deployment. Not just gear on racks, but control, insight, and uptime across every edge.
If you’re rolling out across campuses, don’t repeat what others got wrong. Write to [email protected]. We’ve already solved it.
