St. Joseph County Intermediate School District (Centreville, MI)

Challenge: With an ever-tightening budget, St. Joseph County Intermediate School District (SJCISD) was searching for new ways to share and streamline resources throughout the district. Making shared communications and processes more efficient was a key element of this strategy. The district sought to reduce overall operating expenses across its nine member districts, as well as implement a standardized technology platform.

Solution: MOSS worked with SJCISD to design and deploy a state-of-the-art technology package that would significantly reduce operating costs, while also meeting or exceeding their existing standards. Initially, an advanced IP telephony system was implemented in four of the nine school districts. The system distributed phone lines to local districts and buildings, while simultaneously consolidating all call-processing hardware to provide different levels of call redundancy – a feature that normally would be cost-prohibitive for individual districts. In addition, those four districts, the system included countywide, extension-to-extension dialing that allows faculty and staff communication via a single extension, regardless of location within the county. Not only did the phone system enable SJCISD to significantly reduce operating expenses, but it actually increased communication reliability, eliminating costly downtime and repairs.

Utilizing several of the newest product offerings from Hewlett-Packard, MOSS was able to make the network as redundant as possible and extend secure access. In some smaller, more remote locations, we relied on cable modems, DSL lines and Aruba’s remote access point technology to encrypt and secure all communications and deliver the same key features as the larger districts.

The team also consolidated all voice, network, firewall and web content filtering services via a county-wide IP address scheme. This allowed the ISD and local districts to have the reliability of a standardized HP Networking switching infrastructure with a low cost of ownership. The robust HP IMC network management tool also includes monitoring, traffic analyzing, remote troubleshooting and configuration, allowing for fewer IT technicians required onsite. Furthermore, MOSS provides routine backup IT services to the ISD, ensuring larger initiatives are properly staffed for successful implementation.

The four member districts now rely heavily on consolidated voice, data, security and internet communications to the ISD. For this reason, the system requires a robust and fault-tolerant network. In addition to IP telephony, the new technology package includes HP Networking’s A7500 series core switch, a totally redundant switch that easily supports the increased network traffic.  MOSS partnered with the ISD to co-locate critical components that assure fail-over and up-time in the event of a downed internet pipe or voice circuit.