Refreshing a University's Data Center

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, and as the future of many businesses became uncertain, technologies that enabled employees to work remotely played a prominent and critical role for many New Era Technology customers. While these concerns were widespread, the extremely evident sector was the State Government market. Without the ability to conduct business, connect with constituents, or process many thousands of unemployment claims remotely, operations would quickly cease, and the public outcry would be deafening.

The initial question on everyone’s mind was, “How can we continue business as usual during a time that is anything but usual?” The answer included working with New Era Technology’s engineering, project management, and service teams. Two states in the Northeast region of the United States reached out to New Era to ask what functionality could be provided to allow thousands of State employees to work remotely. The larger question at hand was to ask: How quickly these options could be implemented during a global pandemic to ensure State employees could experience and provide the same
services from home as they are accustomed to providing at their office?
New Era Technology’s team quickly mobilized to evaluate and identify the following options to address immediate needs:

• Extension to Cellular (EC500)
• Call Forward
• Softphone - (PC based application)
• E-Fax
• Voicemail to Email Integration
• One-X Remote Call Center Agent

Under New Era’s MassVoice offer for the State’s agencies, these options provided most of the telephony functionality that would be required for users to perform their jobs remotely. One challenge that made this project complex included racing to provide the MassVoice Call Center agents the ability also to work remotely. To enable Call Center Agents to work
remotely, the Avaya One-X Remote Call Center Agent License was required. Most of the Call Centers did not have this license as most Agents have historically worked in the office. An additional challenge included customer systems requiring to be on more current software releases for New Era to obtain and deploy licensing. New Era’s talented teams worked quickly with Avaya to acquire temporary One-X Agent licensing necessary to allow remote Call Center functionality.

New Era’s Unified Collaboration Engineering team deployed the licenses to systems, both current and older, and remotely set up the following call centers:

State One:

• Office of the Governor and Office of the State Treasurer
• Division of Standards
• Executive Office of Technology Services & Security
• Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development
• Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (Multiple call centers)
• EEA/IT
• Environmental Police Registration
• Department of Conservation & Recreation Human Resource Department
• Department of Public Utilities Consumer Division

State Two:

• Department of Labor and Training

As the pandemic continued, one State’s Governor’s Office had an urgent request to setup two statewide COVID-19 Testing Call Centers specifically for First Responders. New Era Technology’s teams designed and deployed two First Responder Call Centers within two days to accommodate the Governor’s request. The implementation of enabling First Responders to be tested quickly for COVID-19 went flawlessly.

As the majority of State agencies began to work remotely, the need for offices to connect through video also arose. For example, one State’s Parole Board needed to communicate with courts and judges throughout the State. New Era worked with Cisco to secure temporary Webex licenses and configured Cisco Webex video solutions for multiple agencies. Also, the State Police for the same State realized that with limited officers allowed to enter State Police barracks, wireless phone solutions would enable State Troopers to roam the barracks without missing calls easily. New Era rolled out Spectralink wireless solutions to forty State Police barracks across the State. The combined efforts of the New Era Technology teams helped make this vision a reality for our customers.

Want to learn more about this project or solution? Call us at 877-696-7720 or send an email to solutions@neweratech.com.