IPcelerate.com

Customer: Harrisburg Area Community College

About the Customer

Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC), located 90 miles west of Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania, provides quality education to more than 20,000 full or part-time students. HACC has five campuses, located in Harrisburg, Gettysburg, Lancaster, Lebanon and York, and is the second largest community college in the state. The college offers a variety of Associate degrees, and receives funding from the state, city and 22 sponsoring K-12 school districts in the surrounding area.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

HACC began transitioning to VoIP four years ago when it ran a pilot program in one of their buildings, Penn Center, which was then being used for summer classes. Two years later they acquired a new building in midtown Harrisburg, and upgraded their IP infrastructure for both buildings. Today, HACC has a total of three buildings integrated into the VoIP system with approximately 120 IP phone users.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

HACC needed to find an overhead paging solution that was compatible with their IP infrastructure and could be used in emergency situations. They had settled on a solution when the unfortunate events occurred at Virginia Tech, and IPcelerate was recommended to them as a more robust solution than what they had initially selected. After reviewing both the IPcelerate and IPstudio platforms, HACC decided these products were a better fit for their money as they could address their emergency management needs, as well as offer a host of additional features not found in competitive products. Both IPcelerate products were installed in September, 2007.

IPcelerate Solutions

HACC has deployed IPsession’s Paging for use in emergency situations. They are in the process of establishing paging zones, which will allow them to send pages to specific buildings depending on the situation and message. They are also using pre-recorded announcements as a time saving measure, as security will be able to select an announcement already in the system instead of having to quickly determine what to say during an emergency.

In addition to paging, HACC is using the IPsession 911 Alert feature to identify the location of the IP phone from which a 911 is made and send alerts directly to key campus personnel. They have recently put this feature to use when two separate 911 calls were made, one a misdial and the other to report suspicious behavior in an employee’s neighborhood. Campus personnel were able to quickly identify the location of the call and verify that the employees were not in need of immediate assistance.

New Telephony Experience

VoIP has changed the telephony landscape for HACC. From automated attendants to extension mobility and unified messaging to efficient paging, the campus is now communicating in a new way.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

HACC is in the initial stages of transitioning all campus buildings to VoIP, beginning with an IP-readiness assessment. For the three buildings already transitioned, HACC would like to integrate the IPsession server with panic alarms, glass break sensors and smoke detectors. As more buildings are transitioned, additional features will be deployed, including call recording with IPsession’s IPstudio recording solution.