Brewed Fresh Daily

Commercially-biased (Cisco) but interesting-topic'ed interview, "VoIP and the Cleveland Municipal Court" here, [f]ound on the Knowledge@Wharton email list. An excerpt:

Doug: What were the strategic challenges you faced with your communications infrastructure? Kim: The major strategic challenge was our inability to manage our own system. The phone company would take several weeks to a month for moves, adds, and changes. We also wanted more advanced features that would enable our users to be more efficient. Our Centrex system predated 1977. Doug: Did your users ask for a change, or did the IT and telecommunications groups decide it was time? Michael: We are a separate branch of the city government. We order through the city and our billings come from them. It wasn't unusual for us to get bills for long distance calls months after the calls were made. Tracing who placed the calls and figuring out which calls were personal and not to be reimbursed was difficult. We had no control over the city billing process. IT came up with this idea. They told us that we could become independent of the city's Centrex system using VoIP technology. We'd also get better accountability in terms of our phone usage. That's what influenced our decision.

Thoughts?

posted by George Nemeth  # 11/18/2004 04:51:00 PM