Perkiomen Valley School District

The Perkiomen Valley School District serves nearly 6,000 students in Pennsylvania. Like many educational institutions, the district faces both shrinking budgets and increased public expectations for innovative technologies. With multiple buildings and campuses spread across a regional area, the district needs a solution that can be managed centrally, and can help to keep the educational community stay connected.

“I am confident that not only are our students well-positioned for the future, but that the ShoreTel UC system will meet the district’s changing communications needs for years to come.”
- Mike Balik, IT Manager, Perkiomen Valley School District.

For some time, the district had been facing rising costs and hours of frustration. After implementing a hosted Cisco IP-based system, it found itself wrestling with both unreliable communications and an imminent expansion project. The stand-alone legacy PBX-based system in place at the high school was neither expandable nor reliable, so rather than extending the hosted solution to the new buildings, the district took the opportunity to investigate other options. In addition to reliability and cost-effectiveness, ease of management was key for the district.

"The ShoreTel UC System was tightly integrated, very easy to manage, and the ShoreTel IP Phones were far superior in quality to any other phone we considered.”
- Mike Balik, IT Manager, Perkiomen Valley School District.

Systems integrator and ShoreTel partner Liquid Networks supplied the district with a unified communications (UC) system consisting of ShoreTel 120, 60, 40, and T1 Voice Switches, two voicemail servers, more than 650 ShoreTel IP Phones, and a ShoreTel IP 8000 conference phone to enable large teleconferences. For a smooth transition, and to enable the school district to budget its capital hardware expenditure, the system was deployed in phases. All district employees are on a single phone and voicemail system, with four-digit dialing and the same rich feature set across locations. Other benefits include:

• Estimated savings of approximately 75 percent over the previous hosted system, enabling the district to reallocate budget toward additional educational resources.
• Unprecedented built-in reliability, which ensures all calls get through, even in the case of a switch or line failure.
• Easy system access and management from anywhere on the network, which frees up the IT group to focus on other, mission-critical projects.
• The system, which looks and behaves like a single, unified platform, scales with plug-and-play simplicity, enabling employees to communicate quickly and easily with co-workers regardless of their location.

“The system is always up and running and that has meant many other intangible benefits, such as time savings, increased efficiency, and faster responses. The schools can always get a call in or out — for a public education service like ours, this level of continuity is vital.”
- Mike Balik, IT Manager, Perkiomen Valley School District.