Department transported onto new phone system
By Leslie Faughnan
With six separate buildings and three different telephone systems, the decision by the Department of Transport to ‘rip and replace’ was inevitable.
The decision was triggered by consolidation to just three locations. After the tendering process, BT Ireland became the chosen supplier of the new VoIP telephony solution.
“Flexibility was the key to making the VoIP choice,” said ICT manager Brian Moyne. “As a department, we have had changing portfolios and responsibilities after every election for some years. So change is the norm for us and going digital brought us the ability to cope quickly, more easily and more economically.”
With the new system, Moyne said a company could “literally pick up the phone and move it to another location with no configuration required. We achieved the move to fewer locations and have moved about 250 staff around over the last couple of years, with minimal downtime or disruption.”
A telling example occurred just over a month ago with the flooding of one of the department’s offices.
“Having isolated the electrics we moved the PCs and handsets, and had the 35 staff relocated with full functionality in a matter of a few hours.
When the problem was over, we moved them all back just as easily.”
The Department of Transport renewed its data network as part of the process, both to optimise performance and to provide for further development in the future.
“We moved up to PoE switches, for example, so the desk handsets are very smart and we have the platform in place to move to unified communications at a later stage,” said Moyne.
“A single point management console is a feature of the software that has proved particularly valuable and efficient for the ICT team.”
