Sankt Ingbert

With its 37,000 inhabitants, the Saarland town of St. Ingbert is located in the western foothills of the German Palatinate Forest. The motto of the town administration in St. Ingbert is: “Work successfully. Enjoy life.” A good communication infrastructure is imperative for a functioning community. The traditional telephone system was old and replacing it with a modern telephone and Unified Communications solution from innovaphone laid the foundation for this.

As the hardware errors in the existing IP telephone system had been on the increase over previous years, the town administration in St. Ingbert decided to consider modernising the communication infrastructure. Various manufacturers were investigated also during CeBIT 2014 in Hanover. Information about various solutions was also sought at the Sindelfingen manufacturer, innovaphone AG’s stand. Together with the innovaphone partner, Ostertag Solution AG, innovaphone, the IP telephone and UC specialist from South Germany took part in the subsequent limited tender and was awarded the contract.

Ostertag Solution AG, based in Walddorfhäslach, near Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, was satisfied with the positive experience it has enjoyed with the innovaphone solution. As was the customer - Thomas Müller, Sales, Ostertag Solution AG, confirms: “When we delivered the innovaphone products to St. Ingbert, the customer was extremely happy to receive the gateways. The customer was thrilled with the solution from day one!” Heinz-Holger Hansen, IT Manager in St. Ingbert town administration, adds: “We liked the innovaphone hardware concept from the beginning! Everything in one compact box, no external servers, and it needs much less electricity than the previous system. Sustainability is an important aspect for us. The innovaphone PBX is just right for this.” The innovaphone system has another plus point - its almost unlimited scalability. Any number of all basic devices of the innovaphone PBX can be combined - thus the solution never comes up against capacity limits.

Installation and project flow

In addition to the main town administration site in St. Ingbert, two further sites - the fire station and the town library - had to be integrated in the innovaphone system. The town hall’s and the ICT department’s innovaphone PBX each run on one IP810 VoIP gateway with a connected IP1060 media gateway; and an IP305 VoIP gateway with a connection to the local trunk line was supplied for both the fire station and the library. The innovaphone redundancy concept comes into play in St. Ingbert: A second, redundant PBX system was set up in parallel to the main innovaphone PBX, which automatically takes over the function of the master PBX without much delay in case of failure. This ensures full functionality of the system at all time.

Approximately 230 employee work stations in the town administration are now using the innovaphone IP222 design telephones with their modern design and large colour display. The innovaphone myPBX Unified Communications client allows employees to access all of the modern Unified Communications applications such as IP telephony, audio conferences, company directories, Presence information, chat, collaboration sessions or video telephony.

The installation process was completed smoothly and quickly. Heinz-Holger Hansen underlines: “Everything ran smoothly. There were no major problems. Most of the transition work could be done by our in-house IT department. We finished the work in just one weekend.” Whilst all maintenance and administration of the previous system could only be done by an external service provider, maintenance and administration is now much easier - also due to the fact that the hardware and software components come from the same manufacturer and are combined in a homogeneous total system. “The Operator was previously from one manufacturer, the fax server from another and telephones were provided by a third manufacturer. We now have everything from one company. The software agreement with innovaphone ensures that our infrastructure is always up-to-date”, Heinz-Holger Hansen summarizes the situation.

Future expansion and further plans

A software upgrade from the innovaphone firmware V10 to V11 is currently being implemented in St. Ingbert. Additional applications are available for the IP telephone and UC solution with the innovaphone PBX software version V11. The solution operability is even easier and more intuitive. Furthermore, adding other external sites to the system is currently being contemplated.