Partner Voices: Logicalis Goes Back to School with Paradise Valley

Sometimes for series such as Partner Voices, I spend a lot of time planning. I will often spend a lot of time on the phone, sending emails out and generally trying to dig up the latest and greatest Cisco Partner success stories. Sometimes, though, happy accidents do happen and a great story just falls right into my lap.

A few weeks back, I was reading some “back to school” articles. Now I don’t have children, mind you. My wife and I just have our pack of dogs, but it was “back to school” time and I was sifting through a few items some friends with children had posted on Facebook. In the midst of those articles, I stumbled upon a press release from Logicalis called Back to School: Logicalis Helps IT Pros Master Video Collaboration Planning.

If you missed their release back in September, check it out. It does a good job of simplifying just why video collaboration is becoming pervasive and how it makes the world smaller for students. The release walks you through some of the planning involved in video collaboration and then invites you to learn more.

Well, my curiosity was piqued as I was sure that somewhere in there was a Partner Voices blog for Cisco. Since Logicalis is a great partner of Cisco, I reached out through some contacts and was able to talk to Brent Graves, Account Manager, Logicalis; and Lisa Dreher, VP of Marketing at Logicalis.

As I suspected, They had some great examples of the work Logicalis has done as a Cisco Partner, but we focused on one in particular. Lisa provided insight on the work Logicalis has done with the Paradise Valley Unified School District in Arizona.

The Paradise Valley Unified School District contains students in kindergarten through grade 12 with 31 elementary schools; eight middle schools; and six high schools. The district is located in 98-square miles of northeast Phoenix and a portion of north Scottsdale Arizona. With 33,500 students, Paradise Valley Unified School District is the seventh-largest school district in the state of Arizona.

When the school district teamed up with Logicalis, it was looking to economically connect a 47 campus school district, while maintaining flexibility for the future. The campuses spread out across a 98-square mile area, and they all needed to be connected back to the main administration office. In order to maintain daily recordkeeping needs, the school district had been maintaining T-1 lines between the campuses and the central office.

Logicalis was able to provide the school district with a network enabled for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), Voice over IP (VoIP), and applications connected through secure wireless networks. This enabled the school district to take the existing campuses, which all had pre-existing Cisco networks onsite, and connect them securely. The school district is now using the existing Cisco network and the new campus-to-campus wireless connection to integrate a VoIP system using Cisco IP phones at all sites.

The implementation of this network, along with the existing networks, has allowed Paradise Valley Unified School District to have:

Inter-campus calls at no added cost
Wireless mobility on district campuses
Increased scalability and flexibility for the future

This latest example from Logicalis is another good example of being innovative and working with what is already in place at a customer site, while still delivering big benefits for your customer.

I encourage you to read the full case study for all the details and share your thoughts with us here in our comments section.