IPcelerate.com

Customer: South Florida Community College

About the Customer

South Florida Community College is home to approximately 3,000 full or part-time students, attending one of four campuses. Founded in 1965, the college employs over 450 people across the campuses in Avon Park, Arcadia, Bowling Green and Lake Placid. The college serves a wide breadth of students and offers instruction via the Web, videoconferencing, telecourse, and traditional classroom settings.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

South Florida Community College transitioned to VoIP because the College needed to become self reliant for the maintenance of its telephony system. The college was paying over $20,000 annually for maintenance and service, and was able to eliminate this vendor expense by deploying VoIP and bringing maintenance in-house. Three campuses transitioned four years ago, and the final campus moved to IP in early 2008.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

With the unfortunate rise in school violence, South Florida Community College was very concerned about safety on campus, as well as how to properly alert personnel in the event of an urgent situation. They needed to invest in a solution which they hoped to never use, but would allow for fast and efficient notification during an emergency. After careful consideration, the college selected the Paging iCast solution available with IPcelerate’s IPsession server.

IPcelerate Solutions

The IPcelerate Paging iCast solution allows the college to notify a unique group of key personnel on each campus in an emergency situation. The college found this solution ideal in that it wanted to be able to isolate notifications to individual campuses in order to provide the most accurate and targeted responses. Key personnel were pre-programmed so notifications can go out quickly at the touch of a button. In the unfortunate event of a campus-wide emergency, South Florida Community College is now ready with a fast emergency notification management solution.

New Telephony Experience

VoIP set a new standard for telephony at South Florida Community College. Employees have found the IP phones easy to use and enjoy the integrated staff directory and ability to personalize many features on their phones. Relocation of phones to different offices within the college is easily managed, and the IT department is highly satisfied with the low maintenance and simplicity of the IP system. With an IPsession server located on each campus, the college recognizes the many features available to them and plans to implement several solutions in the coming years.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

Managing emergency situations is a key concern for the campus, including fast response to internal 911 calls. Currently, the college is challenged with locating the caller in 911 situations, and plans on implementing IPcelerate’s Internal 911 Alert Notification solution. When a 911 call is made on any of the campuses, IPcelerate’s solution will automatically notify key personnel of the call and its location, resulting in immediate emergency response. The college is also interested in implementing icon-driven dashboards on a variety of phones across the campus.