Lincoln Land Community College

What began as expert architectural and design support for a lean IT team has grown into a multi-year partnership: a full data center and network redesign, a standardized, centrally managed Fortinet stack, and a Microsoft Purview data governance foundation, all delivered while LLCC stayed focused on serving students.

From the very first conversation with RL Canning, the approach was warm and sincere, not pushy. That told me everything about how the relationship would go. And it has played out exactly that way.

Their Engineering on Demand model gave us someone on site backed by deep expertise, meaning we had exactly what we needed, when we needed it. The recommendations made sense and were clearly built around what was best for LLCC, not a generic playbook. Reliable, transparent, and always keeping us in the loop on what is happening with our environment.

What started as filling an urgent gap has grown into a long-term partnership, and that happened because RL Canning earned it.”

Esteban Cruz, Chief information officer, Lincoln Land community College

Opportunity

Lincoln Land Community College (LLCC) runs a lean IT team whose members wear multiple hats, supporting a broad range of vendors, systems, and infrastructure across the college. When the time came for an update to their networking infrastructure in their primary data center, they found themselves in need of design and architecture expertise. They needed a partner who could step in quickly and help chart the path forward.

The college turned to RL Canning’s Engineering on Demand offering. Rather than a generic staffing fill, the model delivered expert architectural and design support to LLCC’s existing team on an expert-to-expert basis. It also included a dedicated RL Canning network engineer to help drive the work day to day, backed by the full depth of our senior network and architecture team.

Solution

The first major initiative was a redesign of the main campus data center. Working on site, our dedicated engineer, supported by RL Canning’s senior network and architecture team, oversaw and facilitated the initial assessment, documented the current state, and then re-architected the entire network stack. We standardized on Fortinet, managed centrally through FortiManager, and pre-configured equipment to streamline deployment, applying RL Canning’s branch network reference architecture so the design could be repeated cleanly across the college’s remote sites.

As trust grew, LLCC engaged RL Canning as its networking procurement partner for all new equipment, replacing aging switches and keeping infrastructure supportable and under active maintenance contracts, so the network never drifts back into an interim state.

The dedicated engineer proved the model in the clearest way possible. After demonstrating consistent value on site, the individual was hired by LLCC as a permanent placement and remains part of the college’s team today, proof that RL Canning sources the right talent for the need.

More recently, LLCC brought RL Canning in for Microsoft Purview. Through a consulting engagement, we baselined the college’s current state and maturity, built a data governance framework, and configured sensitivity labels, classifiers, and logical DLP policies. We delivered a forward roadmap and ran showcase and enablement sessions covering data governance, tagging, information protection, and investigations, so LLCC’s team could grasp the platform’s capabilities and carry them forward. The engagement’s momentum even led the college to re-establish its data governance committee.

Results

By meeting LLCC at each point of need, RL Canning helped the college modernize its network, strengthen its security posture, and lay a foundation for data governance, all without pulling the internal team off its own priorities.

• Replaced aging, multi-vendor equipment with a standardized Fortinet stack, managed centrally through FortiManager.
• Strengthened security posture across every site, replacing a patchwork, site-by-site setup with one consistent standard.
• Freed LLCC’s lean team to keep advancing its own initiatives while RL Canning accelerated capabilities that would otherwise take far longer to build in-house.
• Established a repeatable network architecture that extends cleanly from the data center to every remote site.
• Delivered a Microsoft Purview foundation, framework, policies, and roadmap, and prompted LLCC to re-establish its data governance committee.
• Turned a targeted engagement into a standing, trusted-advisor relationship, with LLCC leveraging RL Canning’s experts on a near-weekly basis.

RL Canning stepped in immediately with the expertise LLCC needed, provided staffing the college was comfortable with well before any hire, and offered guidance at every step. It was never an interim fix. As LLCC looks to its next priorities, the two teams are already scoping what comes next.