Oklahoma's Claremore Public School District consisting of eleven sites including 5,000 students and staff.
Problem:
From a functional perspective, the Claremore School District wanted to provide teachers and parents with 24-hour accessibility to its curriculum and class assignments, while providing a central repository for student and financial information for authorized use. At the same time, the School District was in need of a technology refresh and was considering an initiative that would replace an antiquated PBX phone system and consolidate the management of its applications onto one network.
Solution:
Peak UpTime realized that the school district could reduce costs and improve productivity by leveraging a converged voice and data network with Voice over IP (VoIP). This was proposed to Terry Simpson, director of technology with the Claremore Public Schools, who envisioned a similar VoIP system that would be manageable from anywhere on the district-wide network and could easily scale with the addition of new schools. His objective was to obtain the latest generation of Ethernet switching technology to support its voice and data requirements; replace an antiquated phone system that consisted of several varieties of small PBX phone systems; and lastly, gain rich and robust network management.
Peak UpTime implemented an integrated and simple-to-use network management system using Extreme Networks® for its Ethernet network foundation and switches, and ShoreTel's pure IP telephony offering for a single point of management, complete feature transparency between locations and scalability to account for the possibility of the school district's expansion.
Results:
Thanks to ShoreTel's unique combination of a distributed software architecture and a switch-based hardware platform, the deployment met the district's need to expand a single phone system into multiple buildings and migrate away from outdated equipment. It also enabled the replacement of an expensive and cumbersome voicemail system. Ultimately, Peak UpTime introduced a solution that met the school district's productivity and reliability objectives and created an immediate savings in annual programming costs.
Terry Siemens, sales executive, for Peak UpTime, added, "We worked as a team to bring about the right solution at the right price to meet the objective. Peak UpTime and the Claremore School District are happy with the outcome."
