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Barry University Improves Communication for Mobile Faculty and Staff
Industry Focus
Higher Education
Size
8,500 students at 20 locations statewide
Networking Solution
Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) solution extends desktop phone service to mobile devices over Wi-Fi
Business Value
Increased availability and productivity of faculty and staff; reduced cellular calling costs; ability to quickly bring up new sites
About Our Customer
Barry University is a small private Catholic university located outside of Miami, Florida. The university offers more than 100 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs in disciplines ranging from science, business and law to arts, education and social work. The school serves a diverse population of 8,500 students and employs 2,100 faculty and staff. From its main campus in Miami Shores, Barry extends its reach through satellite programs located throughout Florida and in the Caribbean.
Situation
Barry University uses an IP PBX system to enhance communication and distribute calls to faculty and staff offices. But faculty and staff often used their personal mobile devices for on-the-job communications, especially when out of the office. This posed the challenges of missed calls, spotty signal availability in some buildings, high costs for cellular calls and compromised boundaries between personal and business communications. Barry needed a way to provide better communications at a lower cost.
Solution
Upon recommendation from AT&T, Barry University chose to install AT&T Dual-Mode Mobile Voice (DMMV), a fixed-mobile convergence solution. Provided by AT&T and ShoreTel, DMMV works with Barry?s existing IP PBX and the campus-wide Wi-Fi network. Calls made to desktop phone extensions are re-routed to smartphones. More than just call forwarding, DMMV enables Wi-Fi calling by connecting these devices to the university?s Wi-Fi network, replacing per-minute cellular calling charges. Now with the ability to access their calls by smartphone, faculty and staff can take advantage of the university?s PBX features such as conference calling, directory lookup and extension dialing.
Putting Principles into Practice
Founded in 1940 by the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Michigan, Barry University has based its mission on the principles set forth by this faithful and forward-thinking group of religious women. ?They have been guiding this university since the very beginning. That?s something we?re very proud of,? said Hernan Londono, Associate CIO. Following the Sisters? values, Barry welcomes a diversity of ages, cultures and perspectives to its institution. U.S. News and World Report ranked the university 16th in the nation for Campus Ethnic Diversity.
Barry has continuously expanded its reach to align with its mission. ?One of our core commitments is community service as social justice,? said Londono. When Barry noticed students traveling far distances to reach campus, the university identified specific areas in the state that lacked access to its programs and created satellite locations to better serve those areas. The school now has 20 locations throughout the state, from south Florida?s Key West north to Tallahassee. It also offers an education program in Nassau, Bahamas and recently opened a physician assistant program in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Barry meets students where they are, offering both full-time enrollment and adult continuing education. As promised on its website, the university helps all students achieve academic excellence through ?highly personalized attention from dedicated professors.? The commitment pays off. Barry University?s graduates rank high in the state for post-graduate earnings and find positions at top-tier national companies.
Out of Reach
Most faculty and staff at Barry have fixed offices equipped with phones and assigned extension numbers. While students generally communicate through email, ?there are cases where email is not adequate,? said Londono. As a teacher himself, he added, ?I have occasions every semester where students call me on the phone.? When not in the office, faculty and staff used their personal mobile phones. But this raised several concerns.
Professors and staff had to release their personal mobile phone numbers to students and other contacts?a step many found uncomfortable. In addition, using personal smartphones for work could be costly. For members of Barry?s IT department, for instance, providing support can require longer phone calls to assist people with technical problems. The busy IT staff had dedicated desktop extension numbers, but often took calls on their personal cell phones while away from their desk. While Barry provides a stipend to cover a portion of personal cellular bills, people were still exceeding their monthly minute allocations.
A better solution was needed. ?We were looking for a way to extend the existing extension number to their smartphones without having to give out their cell phone numbers and without having to use cellular minutes,? explained Londono.
Extending the Desk to the Smartphone
Barry University decided to extend its campus phone system to employees? personal mobile devices, using AT&T Dual-Mode Mobile Voice. As a longtime service provider, AT&T sits in on the school?s monthly IT meetings. After hearing the university?s concerns, AT&T suggested DMMV as a cost-effective and easy to deploy alternative. ?The AT&T team did a very good job outlining the solution and we saw eye-to-eye from the get-go,? said Londono. AT&T worked with provider ShoreTel on the deployment.
Unlike other options Barry considered, DMMV integrates smartphones into the university?s existing Avaya IP PBX phone system. ?A simple extension-forward to the cell phone would still have eaten up cellular minutes,? explained Londono. With DMMV, smartphones connect to the same Voice over IP (VoIP) network as the Avaya phone system, which sends voice communication over Wi-Fi to the mobile device with the ShoreTel RoamAnywhere Client. The desk phone extensions remain the primary contact number as calls are routed through them to the mobile devices. The cross-device and cross-carrier solution allows users to bring their own personal smartphone, an important consideration.
The dedicated team at AT&T and ShoreTel made sure the solution exactly fit Barry?s needs. During initial deployment, Barry realized it had to be able to enter long-distance codes for accounting purposes from mobile device keypads, something the software did not allow. ShoreTel took the time to reconfigure the solution. ?They went down to the level of re-quoting and releasing new versions,? said Londono. ?And they actually made it much simpler to do.? Barry bought 100 licenses and deployed the first 20 to its highly mobile IT support staff.
Now DMMV reduces cellular expenses for faculty and staff. ?With the ability to leverage a campus Wi-Fi connection, our staff can provide support without having to worry about whether they?re over their cellular minutes,? said Londono.
Office Hours . . . on the Road
Though they serve thousands of students, the school?s multiple campuses posed their own communications challenge. To serve distant sites, which can be 30 miles or more apart, some professors travel weekly to different campuses and don?t maintain permanent offices.
?Now students can call the extension and the support person will receive the call, regardless of where they are,? Londono said. It?s more convenient for everyone; students get through and staff can respond without rearranging their schedules. In addition, faculty and staff can program outgoing calls to display the university?s number instead of their own, removing the issue of students having access to professors? personal information.
For traveling faculty, DMMV expands how office hours are used, creating more options than just in-person meetings or email alone since Barry?s campuses are fully Wi-Fi enabled. ?A solution like this covers that gap,? said Londono. Access to cost-effective, mobile device communication also increases the potential for mobile meetings that use voice.
Next on the Horizon
Another advantage: DMMV helps improve access in buildings with weak cellular signal penetration. This is true for the newer LEED certified buildings on campus as well as those that date back to 1940 and are built of solid concrete that impairs strong cell signals. ?It just so happens that one of those places is where the President of the University is located,? said Londono. The headquarters building will receive DMMV this year.
It?s simple to add users to the solution and Barry?s IT team can easily deploy the licenses. ?The user downloads the ShoreTel RoamAnywhere Client to their smartphone and we do a configuration where we add their extension number and have them sign in with their existing university username and password,? said Londono. In addition to the President?s building, the university will implement DMMV at its new site in the U.S. Virgin Islands?a quick and easy solution for a telephony challenged area.
Already Barry is imagining ways to expand DMMV in the future. The university sees potential in a student dormitory that?s currently being built and showing signs of poor cell signal reception. ?If the penetration problem exists in that location, AT&T and ShoreTel are positioned to be one of the solutions there,? said Londono. ?In that case it would definitely be one of the things I was not expecting to have the software do.? Like the students it serves, Barry University continues to learn what?s possible.
Voice of the Customer
?Our staff can provide support without having to worry about whether or not they?re over their cellular minutes.?
- ?Hernan Londono, Associate CIO, Barry University
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