Company
A true partner, Fingerpaint helps manage the complexities of today’s marketing environment, delivering a full range of integrated solutions across multiple channels. Their services include strategic planning, brand development, print, broadcast, direct marketing, public relations, social media, digital marketing, web development, SEO/SEM, mobile and analytics for industries including automotive, banking, B2B, fashion, education, healthcare, manufacturing and pharmaceutical.
Their mission is to bring childlike verve to advertising, and are known as much for their energy, positive attitude and approach as for their deep experience and award-winning, results-driven creative.
Employee-owned, with no offices, no titles and no egos (no kidding), they’re a fluid cross section of talent under one roof. Their passion lies in developing strategically informed and original ideas that spark emotions, inspire audiences and move markets.
Challenge
ADKtechs was challenged with providing a unified communications (UC) solution that would fit the needs of one of INC. 5000’s fastest growing companies in the United States. Their existing phone system was old, outdated, and lacked current features that would allow for their team to effectively collaborate during this period of rapid growth. On top of their rapid growth from an employee standpoint, they added additional office locations throughout the states. Each office needed to remain connected to the headquarters in Saratoga Springs, NY. Each employee needed to be able to collaborate at any time, from any device, from anywhere in the world.
Future growth was also to be a consideration and the integration of future technologies was a must. The customer needed to have the environment wired for multimedia TVs, wireless access points, conference rooms, network equipment, plotters, printers and computer connections along with a plan for future expansion.
Each employee would be provided with a smartphone, a tablet, and a desktop or laptop. The desired solution would have to accommodate these needs while maintaining a secure, productive, and highly available solution.
Solution
Before ADKtechs could begin to deploy a single piece of Cisco collaborative gear, we had to prepare the environment to connect hundreds of wired and wireless devices. ADKtechs fitted the infrastructure with 6 miles of CAT6e cable to approximately 200 locations. All cabling was pulled to demark location in the server room and professionally terminated, labeled, and certified. The rack was fitted with proper cable management and custom-length cables connecting the field cable to a large Cisco stack of switches capable of handling 130 million packets per second of data. Multiple networks (VLANs) were deployed to segment voice traffic, data traffic, production wireless, and guest wireless traffic. The Cisco switch stack consisted of Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology to power each phone, wireless access point, and other networking equipment.
To address the customer’s needs of remaining connected to each other at all times, we provided connectivity via an Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network delivered by Level 3. ADKtechs deployed each site using Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, for quick fail-over of critical services to alternate locations. Each site has a 50MB dedicate Layer-2/3 MPLS connection with a 100MB internet connection. The WAN solution provides connectivity for each site, allowing seamless inter-office collaboration.
For the UC platform, ADKtechs deployed a Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6K) to accommodate collaborative needs. We combined this platform with Cisco Jabber. Cisco Jabber lets you access presence, instant messaging (IM), voice, video, voice messaging, desktop sharing, and conferencing. This allows for Fingerpaint staff to find the right people, see if and how they are available, and collaborate using their preferred method.
The delivered solution also allowed for the centralization of a single platform for all phone numbers. Utilizing high-availability features of the BE6K, we were able to fail-over Saratoga phone numbers to be answered in Villanova, PA or Scottsdale, AZ to make sure they do not miss a single call should a site go down.
Resolution
In the end, ADKtechs was able to deliver a fully functional high-tech UC platform for a customer with high expectations for modern communications. Fingerpaint can now effectively communicate via voice, video, instant messaging, and desktop collaboration or via conference bridges. Voicemail is sent to e-mail and deleted when removed from your inbox, instead of having to do it on your phone. Placing a call to Scottsdale is as easy as dialing an extension.
