In the words of Victor Kennedy, Director of Talladega County 9-1-1, “Networks don’t get more mission-critical than emergency communications.”
In November 2009 Talladega consolidated all of their call and dispatch services for 5 law enforcement agencies, 4 fire departments, 3 emergency medical services and 4 other private services into a single communications network, covering 760 square miles. In its first year, Talladega County 9-1-1 handled 99,000 requests for assistance and 252,000 calls.
Until last year, calls for assistance could be received by any of the multiple Public Safety Answering Points, depending on the caller’s location. However, it was not always clear where the caller was located when cell phone and VoIP were in the picture. To alleviate this problem Talladega County implemented a single IP-enabled E9-1-1 Consolidated Communication Center. That was still a lot for one network to handle.
Here’s where WhatsUp Gold comes in. A consultant for Director Victor Kenndedy introduced him to WhatsUp Gold, and they have never looked back since. It allowed for a drastic improvement in efficiency with alerts setup for email to Blacberry and laptop devices, double monitoring of the entire network: phone, CAD database, etc.), and optimized SNMP and network monitoring, including ping latency reports.
After a two-day custom install through Ipswitch Professional Services, Kennedy claimed “that’s when I stopped wondering about the value of WhatsUp Gold [and] realized it could actually help us save lives.”
Read the full case study here.