CITY IN THE CLOUD: SEARCHING FOR SUPERIOR CALL QUALITY
The City of Del Mar is a small local municipality in northern coastal San Diego County. The City provides typical municipal services, such as planning, engineering, business licencing, water and sewer utilities, fire protection, lifeguard patrol, and parking enforcement. In addition to providing citizen services, the City is a popular tourist destination known for its pristine beaches and seaside village charm.
THE CHALLENGE
The City deployed a Cisco on-premise phone system in 2005 knowing that it would have to replace hardware about every five years. Due to the limited resources of a small IT department, every upgrade required third-party consulting support that was costly and fraught with issues and time delays. In 2014, their hardware was outdated, and the City was preparing to relocate its operations to a new building.
Faced with the issue of a long and arduous process of replacing systems again, Ms. Bernardo, the City’s IT Manager, researched various options. Based on feedback she had received from other local cities, she was worried that a fully hosted solution would not have the call quality and service they desired.
THE GOAL
- Reduce system replacement expense
- Ensure superior call quality
- Exceptional support & training
THE SOLUTION
Willing to explore a hosted communication platform, Ms. Bernardo reached out to Tredent Data Systems (TDS), the City of Del Mar’s IT consultant, to explore hosted communications platforms. Tredent proposed using a hosted Cisco solution that allowed the City to use its existing handsets to further help reduce costs. The City issued a Request for Proposals for Unified Communications as a Service and selected CallTower based on their experience, pricing, and end-to-end Cisco solution.
To address the issue of phone quality, Tredent worked with their partner CallTower to provide a proof of concept that gave the City an opportunity to try the solution with a small subset of users before committing to an entire system. The pilot group proved to be a great test bed and showed no degradation in call quality and was equally good as their current on-premise solution. Moreover, the hosted solution also provided more functionality than the City currently had with its existing system.
“I sleep better at night knowing that we have a fully redundant phone system that is being monitored and managed by CallTower. CallTower has become an extension of the IT Department and has freed up our time to focus on projects that will further the City’s strategic goals.”
– Emily Bernardo, IT Manager, City of Del Mar
After deciding to move forward, Tredent and CallTower paired together to implement the City on their new fully hosted Cisco solution. Weekly meetings were scheduled, planned, and tasks executed to meet an aggressive deployment timeline. The project went off without a hitch and was completed a couple of months ahead of schedule. A key component of the project was to implement CallTower Managed Voice Continuity (MVC) to ensure that the phone system is always available. CallTower provisioned a dedicated MPLS circuit on the City’s behalf and configured failover to the City’s primary internet circuit to add an additional layer of redundancy. The MPLS circuit is monitored and managed by CallTower 24×7, and the IT staff no longer has to manage PRI circuits and deal with the Telco provider directly. Another win for IT!
THE RESULTS
The end result is a happy IT manager who successfully implemented a fully redundant hosted communication system and will never have to endure a painful and costly phone system upgrade again. The City’s staff is now able to take advantage of the features of a future-proof phone system that is always up-to-date, with a continuous cycle of new enhancements that will enable staff to communicate more effectively and reliably.
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