Dartmouth Installs 7,000-Phone VoIP Implementation

A contact send me a release today describing a large VoIP project recently completed by Dartmouth College. Described as "one of the largest VoIP systems completed so far at a four-year college," the 7,000-phone job was done by Networked Information Systems (NIS), a Cisco partner in Woburn, Mass.

I'm a little puzzled by the release. On the one hand, the release is dated today (Sept. 27, 2005) and I haven't seen this story reported on previously. On the other hand, the release indicates that the installation has been operational since the beginning of Dartmouth's school year, so I don't think this story should have been any secret.

In any case, I thought I would publish the announcement here in full since it doesn't seem to have been made public anywhere else:

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NIS Completes 7,000 Phone VoIP Project at Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College staff and students will enjoy state-of-the-art voice and data communications this year thanks to a 7,000 phone IP telephony project by Networked Information Systems.

Woburn, Mass., September 27, 2005 – When faculty, staff and students arrived at Dartmouth College this fall they were greeted by a campus-wide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone system, courtesy of Networked Information Systems (NIS), Woburn, Mass. The 7,000 phone system – one of the largest deployed by a private, four-year college – will enable Dartmouth to reduce its telecommunications costs while increasing the flexibility and productivity of faculty, staff and students.

“We’re happy to have played a role in helping Dartmouth College deploy an advanced IP telephony system that merges voice and data traffic over the same backbone,” said NIS Co-CEO Robert Murphy. “We deployed a highly flexible  infrastructure that will enable Dartmouth to deploy a wide range of voice and data applications that will be attractive to students and faculty alike.”

Dartmouth College administrators decided to undertake the project two years ago. “Our old TDM PBX was nearing the end of its useful life,” said Robert Johnson, Director of  Voice and Data Converged Systems at Dartmouth College. “We decided that voice traffic could be provided more strategically and cost-effectively by converging our voice and data networks,” said Johnson.

“Dartmouth already had a Cisco Systems data network in place, and that made the transition to a fully converged network relatively straightforward,” said Murphy. “We installed nearly 200 additional Cisco switches with Power Over Ethernet to ensure voice availability during a power outage, and we made sure that within the converged network voice had priority over data. In addition, we installed a 7,000-user voice mail system supported by five Microsoft Exchange Servers and a high-end Cisco Unity Server. The new voice mail system has dramatically reduced the maintenance and support outlays they endured with their old system.”

Another benefit to Dartmouth was the reduced cost and complexity of moves, adds and changes (MACs), which plague every plain old telephone system (POTS) administrator. With a VoIP system in place, Dartmouth’s network administrator can easily accommodate hundreds of student, faculty and staff relocations in a simple point and click environment on a PC. In the past, technicians had to visit individual dorms and offices to make such changes.

Johnson, who managed the VoIP deployment for Dartmouth, is pleased with the results of the two-year project. He advises managers in similar situations to do their homework and choose an implementation partner with a strong track-record and the highest certification levels in the technologies they will be integrating.

“Initially we had some concerns about the quality of service and reliability we could expect from a VoIP network,” said Johnson. “But Cisco was fairly mature in this market, so we ran some production pilots with NIS to ensure that our network could support a ‘five-nines’ application like voice, and then deployed the system in stages over a two-year period to avoid disrupting faculty, staff and students during the school year. Throughout the project, NIS provided the necessary mix of flexibility and expertise that enabled us to meet our goals. They truly believed in the technology and the concept of partnering.”

Networked Information Systems is one of the fastest growing information technology solution providers in the world. NIS provides a broad range of IT infrastructure products and services built atop the leading technology platforms in enterprise systems, storage management and data communications. Solutions include IP communications, network infrastructure, systems and storage infrastructure, security, messaging, remote computing, and IT support.

Cisco and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the US and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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AB -- 9/27/05