Posts Tagged ‘Deployment’

Improved Organizational Communications – Singlewire InformaCast and AXP

May 6th, 2010 | Author: Brad Parkel

Read this entire post on the Cisco Application Extension Platform at Cisco.com

Download PDF Document on IP Broadcast with AXP for Improved Organizational Communications from Cisco.com

Introduction

Schools, hospitals, businesses, and government entities all recognize the criticality of timely and accurate communications in their organizations. Miscommunication and delayed announcements can affect productivity — and potentially safety. Communications must meet accuracy and timeliness standards even when the recipient is located at a remote location or branch office, as staff increasingly tends to be. And given the volumes of email that must be managed, important messages can easily be overlooked or ignored, mandating the need for a diverse set of communications methods to ensure receipt of important messages.

Industry Trends

Numerous industry trends influence organizational communications. With technology facilitating virtual workplaces and geographical independence, the number of remote locations is growing 11 percent every year. In fact, U.S. government statistics based on U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reports indicate that 84 percent of government personnel work away from the campus location. With this proliferation, and the pressing need to decrease operating expenses, there is now a trend toward centralization and “thin” remote locations. But because an increasing number of decision makers are remote, centralization must be achieved without compromising branch-office performance or availability.

The wide adoption of IP communications has resulted in many innovations. Organizations need to innovate and adapt to remain competitive and deliver advanced services available only with a voice-over-IP (VoIP) foundation, but they also need to maintain and enhance traditional communication services.

Cisco and Singlewire: Location-Independent IP Broadcast

Cisco continues to expand the value of the integrated services router and the breadth of functions it delivers with the Cisco^® Application Extension Platform (AXP), a network integrated services platform. Cisco AXP can help your organization host and deploy advanced applications, such as Singlewire^® Software’s InformaCast, onto your Cisco integrated services router. With the Singlewire InformaCast solution, your organization can reduce network complexity while saving on power and valuable space.

How It Works

The combination of Cisco AXP and Singlewire InformaCast addresses the need to consolidate in the remote locations of your organization. As depicted in Figures 1 and 2, Singlewire InformaCast is a software component that runs on the Cisco AXP module. The module, in either enhanced-network-module (NME) or advanced-integration-module (AIM) form, resides in the Cisco integrated services router. Supported with either Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (UCME), Singlewire InformaCast allows you to simultaneously push an audio stream or text message to multiple Cisco IP Phones, InformaCast compliant IP speakers by Atlas Sound, the InformaCast Desktop Notification System, or an overhead paging system. An administrator can select a prerecorded message or send a live broadcast through either a password-protected webpage or the IP Phone services menu. The administrator can design these messages to be sent within a single site or across the organization and affiliates.

Figure 1. Cisco AXP and Singlewire InformaCast Single-Site Example

In a single-site solution, the same integrated services router that houses the AXP module can also provide Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express for even more consolidation and solution simplification. IP endpoints, such as Cisco IP Phones and traditional endpoints such as analog-based public announcement systems can be supported with the Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution. Multicast is used across the broadcast network.

Figure 2. Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast Multisite Example

Like the single-site solution, multicast is used for communications between connected Cisco UCME sites with a variety of endpoint types.

Solution Highlights

The solution provides server consolidation and a decreased branch-office footprint:

• Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) with less power consumption

• Provides enhanced productivity and better management

• Provides better network and application services integration

The solution offers numerous services with a flexible breadth of service types:

• You can create live, temporary, or prerecorded audio broadcasts and/or text broadcasts.

• The solution supports a variety of endpoints.

• You can administer the solution through a variety of flexible interfaces.

• You can filter access to message types and recipient groups by user.

• You can schedule messages to be sent at a preset time or on a recurring basis.

• You can configure the frequency of message playback.

The solution technology is proven:

• Founded on 20 years of innovation and validated by millions of deployments sites, Cisco integrated services routers provide multiservice routing, offering your company exceptional network agility, performance, and intelligence.

• The Singlewire InformaCast resume includes successful installations with Cisco Unified Communications Solutions across a variety of organizational sizes. Singlewire has achieved multiyear Cisco awards for U.S. Technology Excellence Partner of the Year for Unified Communications and Security.

Business Benefits

Compliance:

• Overhead paging often does not reach hearing-impaired employees, compromising their safety. Singlewire InformaCast helps ensure the safety of all employees by simultaneously sending an audible broadcast and text message to Cisco IP Phones and desktops. All employees have equal access to vital information about emergencies or network outages.

• In the wake of September 11 and hurricane Katrina, many government entities are mandating that facilities meet strict emergency notification guidelines. The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution provides streamlined packaging to meet these emerging regulations.

Total cost of ownership:

• The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution optimizes total cost of ownership (TCO) by centralizing management and the hosting environment for service for up to 1000 endpoints from a single integrated services router.

• The IP-based broadcast solution saves up to 70 percent of the cost of a traditional paging system, adds many more features, and eases management complexity with a variety of management interfaces. The solution takes advantage of existing voice and data network resources, requires no dedicated wiring, and often requires no need to wire or rewire speakers and amplifiers. The broadcast solution extends the investment already made in Cisco IP Phones beyond just dial tone.

Improved organization communications:

• Because the Singlewire InformaCast application provides the ability to send simultaneous, live audio to an IP phone, desktop, and inline IP speaker, or any preferred endpoint, it is a critical component of improved organizational communications.

• The combined Cisco and Singlewire solution provides a simplified, consolidated package for one-button messaging from a phone or one-click messaging from the desktop, and it allows you to send live, recorded, or scheduled messages.

Read this entire post on the Cisco Application Extension Platform at Cisco.com

Posted in Additional Resources |

Tags: AXP, Cisco, Deployment, Emergency Communications, InformaCast, IP Paging, IP Speakers, Mass Notification |

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Design Zone for Education – A Singlewire InformaCast Resource from Cisco for Deploying Emergency and Mass Notification

January 20th, 2010 | Author: Brad Parkel

Cisco Notifi-Ed Solution Deployment Design Guide

Cisco has created a design guide resource for deploying emergency and mass notification systems for education as part of the Cisco Notifi-Ed solution.

The Cisco Notifi-Ed solution for School Safety and Security is a Cisco Validated Design (CVD) that provides school districts with an integrated communications system for rapid mass and audience-specific message broadcasting. The solution demonstrates how the Cisco Unified Communications can be used by Reliance Communication’s SchoolMessenger system and Singlewire’s InformaCast product to deliver rapid communications to school administrators, teachers, students, and parents through audio, Register for Text Messages (SMS) text, and email and to receive and log acknowledgements from message recipients, a critical function in emergency situations where school districts must be sure that parents have received announcements about the well-being of their children. The Cisco Notifi-Ed can be used to send emergency communication as well as daily operational announcements to the broader community that consists of parents, school district administrators, school faculty, students, and law enforcement.

Click to learn more about this resource

Posted in Additional Resources |

Tags: Bells and Clocks, Cisco, Deployment, Emergency, InformaCast, K-12, SchoolMessenger |

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Webinar – Improving School Communications with Singlewire, Cisco & SchoolMessenger

December 29th, 2009 | Author: Brad Parkel

Date: Thursday, Jan 28, 2010
Time: 2:00 pm ET / 11:00 pm PT
Duration: One hour (15 mins for Q&A)

We invite you to join a free live webcast on Improving School Communications, featuring experts from the award-winning Los Alamitos Unified School District in California.

In today’s 21st century learning environment, the ability to communicate the right information to the right people at the right time is essential. Schools have to be able to reach every student, parent and staff member in the district, efficiently and economically, and often at short notice. Yet many schools are using costly mass notification services, or still relying on aging auto-dialers, labor-intensive manual calls, and expensive printed communications, with little or no standardization within the district.

Los Alamitos USD has been recognized multiple times for academic achievement, including the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence award and the California Distinguished Schools award. In this webcast, you’ll learn how they addressed the challenges of school communication with a centralized district-wide notification system, featuring:

Automatic calls for absentee notification, general announcements, emergency situations, homework and test information
Instant translation to more than 30 languages
Integrated paging, bells, alarms, and text alerts/messages
Simultaneous broadcast of audio streams and text messages to IP phones, IP speakers, desktops, and overhead paging systems
Surveys and interactive messages to obtain parent feedback and build community support

Panelist(s) Info:

John Spiratos, Director of Information Technology, Los Alamitos Unified School District
Nate Brogan, VP Marketing, SchoolMessenger
Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President, Product Management, Singlewire
John Speicher, Education Solutions Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.

https://ciscosales.webex.com/ciscosales/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=207951097

Read Case Study to learn more: http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/gov/LosAlamitos_cStudy.pdf

Posted in Events |

Tags: Case Study, Cisco, Deployment, InformaCast, K-12, Los Alamitos, SchoolMessenger |

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