Municipality Sant Boi de Llobregat

Security by design and powerful technology for improved customer service, adapting to the challenges of the digital world

The town of Sant Boi de Llobregat in Catalonia has approximately 83,000 inhabitants and lies on the banks of the Llobregat river. The town administration is a major driver of the economy, of networking, creativity, innovation while providing a service center for its inhabitants. Thanks to its development and proximity to the airport and the city of Barcelona, the town has become an important strategic center for communication and industrial development in the region.

Having implemented the new innovaphone PBX system, Sant Boi town administration now has a secure and powerful communications solution that ensures simple and efficient access to various town services.

Unified Communications: Next Generation EU project co-financed by the European Union

The project to modernize and improve the telephone network of the town administration and its municipal companies is part of the digital transformation plan to introduce modern IP telephone systems with unified communications and digital workstations that are accessible for mobile work and that gradually improve services for citizens.

Following the publication of the technical specifications for the project and the subsequent evaluation of the proposals submitted for the tender, the solution from the German manufacturer of modern communication solutions for companies, innovaphone AG, was finally selected to replace the communication system.

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Initial scenario: Communication systems from different manufacturers and without any kind of integration

The on-premises switchboards, which were distributed across various town administration offices and municipal companies, only enabled telephone communication and were therefore unable to meet the new requirements of digitizing workstations and communication and providing integration with the town administration.

While the previous installation comprised old servers and equipment on site, the new system allowed all communications to be migrated to a virtual environment, providing higher performance while also ensuring daily backups of the new installation. Furthermore, although almost all of the devices being used were analog and digital (non-IP), there was also an IP telephone system with IP and 100 SIP end devices that the customer wanted to have integrated into the new system.
 
“At the outset every municipal facility had its own switchboard. One of the main objectives of the project was to standardize all switchboards to make it easier for citizens to reach any town administration employee by telephone, regardless of which building their office is in or whether they work from home,” explains Carmen Lavado Sánchez, head of digital and ICT services at the town of Sant Boi.

Requirements and design of the new Unified Communications solution

In addition to integrating existing IP devices and using existing connections, the new system had to offer stability, high standards-based availability and scalability for further growth and adaptation to the current and future needs of the town. Other important aspects included ensuring the system is secure and the telephone service is consistently available at all times, as well as maintaining the existing range of functions.

In a project with over 1,000 users (each with individual profiles and working environments, where the biggest challenge was resistance to change), the innovaphone myApps communication client with its intuitive user interface now enables all professional communication functions to be used. Furthermore, the integration of the new innovaphone communication and collaboration tools demonstrates the full potential of the innovaphone application platform.

The new innovaphone myApps Cloud Service: Security by design and powerful technology for improved customer service, adapting to the challenges of the digital world

By migrating all communication functionalities to virtual machines, two Data Processing Centers (DPCs) were created at two separate and geographically redundant locations. A first IPVA (innovaphone Virtual Appliance) was installed in DPC1 – housed in the Casa de la Vila and the headquarters of the town administration – which takes over the functions of a PBX or main switchboard, while a second virtual machine accommodates the innovaphone myApps Application Platform as well as additional mechanisms for securing innovaphone communication such as the Reverse Proxy (RP) and the Session Border Controller (SBC). DPC2 is located in the IT premises of the local police station (connected via optical fibre cable 5 km away from the town hall) and houses a second IPVA as a secondary PBX in stand-by mode for the main PBX. It is therefore a redundant master-slave scenario that guarantees the system will survive with high availability in the event of a critical incident or “disaster recovery” event while providing security and continuity of communication services for the town administration and the citizens of Sant Boi in any circumstance.

As well as meeting all minimum requirements, the innovaphone IP-PBX has numerous value-added features such as two-factor authentication, a virtual PBX that runs directly on VMware without the need for a third-party operating system: a single software on a single server with all system functions (PBX/SBC/Unified Communications/Reverse Proxy). In terms of security, it also provides standardized security mechanisms and protocols that can be verified at any time and which protect all phases of the communication process: from establishing a connection, over transmitting data and voice, to managing access data.

Unified Communications and video conferencing solution are on board the system

The video conferencing system by innovaphone provides users with maximum flexibility at all times: Users can participate in a conference call from anywhere at any time. External participants can join a virtual myApps meeting via their browser: No additional software required and no additional fees apply.

On one and the same user interface, the innovaphone myApps provides a wide range of modern UCC functionalities – phone and softphone integration, desktop sharing, video conferencing, voicemail, fax, chat and much more – as well as traditional telephone features from any location and any device. myApps is easy and intuitive to use,thus reducing the training period for the new solution to a minimum. This simple and intuitive communication interface not only facilitated the acceptance of the changeover, but also enabled other user groups and people with special needs to be included and integrated, and who now work as professional telephone agents providing 360° citizen care for everyone - without a physical device and simply via the innovaphone myApps web client and tools such as the innovaphone Switchboard Operator console, thus fulfilling the requirements of both accessibility and inclusion in the social work of Sant Boi town administration.

“At first, changing over from a traditional telephone terminal to a softphone caused a certain amount of scepticism in a lot of employees, but once the possibility of being able to make calls from any device and from any location was recognized in practice, this initial scepticism was quickly overcome. Now everyone has gotten used to the new solution and we are delighted with it,” says Carmen Lavado Sánchez, Head of Digital and ICT Services at the Sant Boi municipality.

Expansion plans: Applications to speed up call processing and integrate all services

In the first phase of the project, 860 users were migrated immediately and all at once thanks to the speed of the innovaphone devices: automatically, by simply entering the activation codes to register the users and registering the new end devices that had been reset to default factory settings.

“Now that we understand the system better and have more usage data, we want to implement functions that speed up the telephone service, such as short-term dialling assistants and, in the medium term, a more intelligent assistance system with natural speech recognition. The greatest advantage of the new innovaphone system for us is the fact that we have an integrated and distributed telephone system that enables us to offer a better service at no extra cost. This cutting-edge technology allows us to plan and implement services according to our needs and to determine the pace of migration ourselves,” explains Carmen Lavado Sánchez, Head of Digital and ICT Services at the Sant Boi municipality.