School District Blazes Path To All-IP Future

Network systems analyst Brian Johnson and his colleagues in the IT department at the Escambia County School District in Pensacola, Florida, didn’t need a crystal ball to know that video surveillance was transitioning to an all-IP world when they began their search for a standardized, district-wide solution four years ago.

“We hit the street with an RFI to see what was out there, although at the time, we knew we wanted a hybrid solution,” recalled Johnson. “IP was just getting started and it was still over and above what we thought we could afford, but we wanted the capability to transition to all-IP sometime down the road.”

Of the four vendor offerings evaluated, the March Networks solution proposed by Pensacola-based Advanced Control Concepts offered the clearest and best thought-out migration path to an all-IP future.

“We subjected the two top systems to a bake-off and a trial in a high-risk facility, and March Networks won hands down,” said Johnson.

The first dozen or so schools were equipped with March Networks 4000 C Series NVRs and analog cameras, but as the March Networks product portfolio evolved, Escambia County School District began acquiring the company’s server-based Video Management Software (VMS) solution and the new web-based March Networks Command IP video management platform.