IPcelerate.com

Customer: Colorado Mountain College

About the Customer

Colorado Mountain College is located in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, delivering quality education to more than 22,000 students across eleven campuses, three of which offer residential housing. CMC’s footprint covers 12,000 miles, including three national forests, six wilderness areas and most of the state’s ski resorts. The College provides liberal arts and science certificate and degree programs, basic and lifelong learning, and custom business training.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

Colorado Mountain College wanted a telephony system that had the capability to create one unified college across all eleven campuses. Their VoIP infrastructure does just that, with 4-digit dialing to all IP phones between all campuses. In addition, they have eliminated long distance phone charges between campuses, unified their voice and data, and can maintain and update their system internally. Currently, seven campuses have transitioned to VoIP, with the remainder scheduled through the summer of 2009.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

CMC needed a paging system that would utilize their new VoIP environment by sending pages directly to IP phones and over IP speakers. They had no emergency management notification process in place, and needed a solution that would allow them to notify the campus community of emergencies, as well as provide direction to ensure the safety of students and staff. They selected IPcelerate’s paging solution after it was recommended to them by their telephony vendor.

IPcelerate Solutions

CMC is using IPcelerate’s paging solution at the Spring Valley campus, a residential campus located seven miles from Glenwood Springs. CMC utlizes the Zone Paging feature, which allows them to set up separate paging areas for each building on campus including residence halls, classrooms, food services and the student center. In the event of an emergecny, real-time audio pages can be sent to specific buildings or across the entire campus, depending on the circumstances. The pages can be sent to all IP phones in each zone, as well as to the overhead IP speakers. CMC also has the capability to pre-record messages that can then be used in emergency situations, however they currently plan on using real-time paging as that allows more flexibility in providing instructions for emergency response.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

There are many IPcelerate solutions CMC is interested in implementing in the future, including pre-recorded messaging for paging, 911 Notification Alert for pinpointing the exact location of internally dialed 911 calls, and Dial-Out for weather alerts, class cancellations and snow closures. With so many solutions already embedded in their existing IPsession server, the College is excited about testing and implementing additional features.