Blake Rachal, Alexandria LA: Enterasys Selected for Network Upgrade

August 11, 2010

The City of Alexandria, Louisiana has selected Enterasys solutions to power a 22 square-mile fiber network that delivers voice and data services to 14 separate locations, including City Hall and the local police department. Through Enterasys solutions and support, Alexandria’s small IT staff now easily manages the next-generation network infrastructure, supporting nearly 1,000 municipal employees.

As a municipality, we must be very conscientious of our fiscal spending, but we were also tasked with finding a reliable, future-focused solution that allows our network to scale as we add new functionality,” said Blake Rachal, assistant director of Information Systems for the City of Alexandria. “Enterasys is the only vendor that could offer us an enterprise-class solution at a midrange cost. As far as administrative tasks, our Enterasys network has decreased my staff’s daily workload by half. The automation built into Enterasys solutions, especially the Intrusion Prevention System and NMS Policy Manager, has allowed us to work smarter and implement long-term goals that were not possible before.”

Enterasys N-Series and C-Series switches now serve at the network’s core and distribution layers, delivering high-speed, reliable access to data and voice for all network users, including City government employees, law enforcement officers, and power and water administration. Enterasys Wireless has been deployed at Alexandria’s City Hall building, and Rachal has plans to build additional wireless hot spots across the remaining municipal locations in the coming months, including the city’s police force.

“Our long-term goal with our Enterasys network is to achieve a redundant, highly scalable wired and wireless mesh network throughout Alexandria,” Rachal noted. “We are currently building a city-wide GIS system that will use the network extensively, allowing for seamless communication from a network server to a law enforcement vehicle.

”Rachal and his IT team also find great value in Enterasys’ award-winning Global Technical Assistance Center (GTAC) and training support programs. “We never have to move through various levels of escalation to get a question answered. We also rely on the disaster recovery and security training the Enterasys team has given us. In our experience, Enterasys’ customer support is a lot stronger than that of other vendors.”