Honoring the Past & Embracing the Future

Located at the convergence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, Kenton County sits in the outer Bluegrass region of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Home of prestigious Thomas More University, Kenton County, formed in 1840, is named for Simon Kenton, a United States frontiersman, soldier and comrade of Daniel Boone. A county rich in history and tradition, it is also on the cutting edge of technology, eagerly embracing new ways of operating intelligently and efficiently.

When Lisa Desmarais came to Kenton County as technology services director in late 2017, she knew the network she inherited was antiquated, but didn’t have a firm grasp — initially — of everything involved. Prior to Kenton County, Desmarais was the director of IT and head of finance for the City of Covington. Entering the position at Kenton County, she also knew she was dealing with the construction of a new administration building — the Kenton County Government Center.

Enter Nick Enger, CTO and senior consultant with Advanced Technology Consulting (ATC). He had previously worked with Desmarais when she was with the City of Covington. Through a comprehensive network audit, Enger gave Desmarais visibility into the entire Kenton County network down to the circuit ID, phone numbers, cost per line item, contract end date and utilization. During this process, circuits and services were uncovered that were thought to be canceled or no longer in service. This constituted immediate savings.

Next-Gen IT, Network Transformation and Cloud Telephony

The audit process allowed Desmarais and Enger to collaborate on what an ideal network would look like, bringing seven antiquated sites up to standards for additional applications to be on the network. Enger assisted in architecting and designing the new network while negotiating with multiple providers on the county’s behalf. Through Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions (CBTS), the county’s network was updated from a point-to-point, hub-and-spoke environment with copper-based facilities to a next-gen “any-to-any,” fiber-based environment with multiple internet drains and disaster recovery (DR) built-in.

“We needed to standup the entire network including the newly constructed admin building and migrate from the legacy network to the any-to-any environment,” says Enger. “This allowed us to standup an existing headquarters and a newly constructed HQ at the same time, as well as a DR facility and have all the routing take place in the network. The vision is to make sure citizens can interact and access the services of the county in a crisis, DR-like situation.”

Once the network was brought up to standards, Desmarais and Enger worked together to migrate from a very old, premise-based PBX to a BroadSoft-based CBTS UCaaS solution. ATC assisted in the auditing of each of Kenton County’s eight business units to determine the decision criteria of a new UCaaS solution from both a technical and an operational standpoint. Once the criteria were developed and weighted, Enger solicited and negotiated with multiple vendors to secure the best pricing and solution for the county’s needs, which ended up being CBTS. The UCaaS solution included over 400 Polycom handsets and conference room phones. The solution also included Cisco switching and routing fully managed by CBTS.

Going the Extra Mile, Specialized IT

Enger then assisted in the project planning and roll-out of the solution, leading as project manager over a six-month period. In 2019, Kenton County’s administration building was being moved to a newly constructed government center that was going to not only house the existing eight business units at Kenton County, but also reel in five additional agencies. The site of the administration building was the combination of a rehabilitation of an existing building with the addition of new construction.

Enger assisted in meeting with all the agencies to integrate their needs into the county’s footprint. The move-in was completed over the course of two weeks, requiring operations at the existing administration building and the new building to be conducted at the same time. Even a Gigabit point-to-point circuit was installed to make sure everything ran optimally no matter the building in which the user was located or where the data center was located.

Seamless Coordination

Enger ensured both were operational at the same time, allowing for a seamless transition for staff and business units, including the newly added agencies. Enger also negotiated with the county’s vendor to pay early termination penalties so the agencies could be reeled into the county’s network compared to being siloed on their own.

“I loved working with Nick and ATC because they have been my ‘one-stop shop,’ not only for researching new services and technologies and obtaining multiple vendor bids, but for handholding during implementation and support after the solution is installed,” says Desmarais, who has since retired.

According to Kenton County’s current technology services director, Jessica Ramsey, who served on Desmarais’ staff during the project, communication between the county’s multiple sites has improved drastically through extension-to-extension dialing, and the county now has an improved disaster recovery system.

“These are significant improvements for our end users, though they are not always visible improvements,” Ramsey notes. “Our upgraded phone system has made daily functioning and collaboration much easier — we use it for web and video conferencing. Even something as simple as voicemail-to-email has been particularly helpful. Call recording has been nice for the sheriff’s office as well.”

The project also resulted in demonstrated cost savings, productivity gains and efficiency improvements. “We are now able to provide faster and more reliable network connections for our end users, our backups are more secure, and we can work more smoothly across our multiple sites,” Ramsey says.

Kenton County is also leveraging ATC’s Super SupportTM, which provides a direct line of highly “personalized” support — above and beyond the provider. The ATC Super SupportTM team knows the particulars of Kenton County’s account and can immediately start assisting. Often, this saves the county countless hours reaching out to “ticket takers,” spending time on hold, and getting no resolution when a problem occurs.

Accolades

Due to next-gen telecom and IT projects like this, CBTS named Advanced Technology Consulting (ATC) as Partner of the Year for 2019. “ATC is certainly among the best when it comes to being a trusted advisor,” says Rob Messmer, CBTS channel chief. “We are very excited to have such a strong relationship with them. By helping clients navigate the rapidly evolving technology world, ATC functions as an extension of their customer’s organization.”

Advanced Technology Consulting is located at 8734 Union Centre Blvd., West Chester, OH 45069. For more information, visit www.4atc.com or call 513.234.4778.