Nutanix has announced that the City of Allen, Texas, chose Nutanix HCI to help meet its commitment to provide approximately 100,000 residents with exceptional and dependable emergency services and communications. The City migrated its computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems to CentralSquare software, backed by a flexible Nutanix HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure) solution to support all public safety departments including Dispatch, Police, Fire, Animal Control, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS). 

Like many local government organizations, the City of Allen relies on its IT network to deliver essential services to citizens. Public safety is a top priority for its IT team, and having the right technology is crucial in supporting its CAD system communications to essential agencies like the Police and Fire departments, as well as EMS. To better serve its residents, the City was looking to migrate its technology systems to a more flexible, scalable environment that was faster and easier to manage.

“In our past environment, adding new IT resources could take days or weeks. We would have to order a physical server, wait for delivery, then install and provision it,” said Aaron Irwin, Systems Administrator at the City of Allen. “Our Nutanix HCI infrastructure has allowed us to better manage over-provisioned servers and our growing environment. If a stakeholder orders a new resource on Thursday, we can set it up and have it fully functional by Friday. That type of responsiveness was not an option for us before.”

To support its communications and services, the City of Allen deployed a Nutanix HCI-powered private cloud that uses software-defined storage to meet the growing need for server demands with scalability and built-in resiliency. The scalable, virtualized Nutanix environment allows Irwin and his team to easily build and manage new infrastructure resources to support new community services. 

The solution helps the City ensure that its CAD system is always running the latest software, which provides new enhancements and features to end users. Running the latest operating systems with the most current security updates and patches helps reduce the risk of cyber-attacks, and lets the City utilize its limited resources more efficiently. 

This level of responsiveness has also been especially helpful in enabling Irwin and his team to address last-minute changes or additions to IT initiatives, or scope creep, a common challenge for IT settings in governmental services. With Nutanix the team is able to quickly identify over provisioned servers and free up infrastructure resources.

“Now more than ever, cities need to ensure that their IT solutions are able to support dependable emergency services and communications,” said John Pellettiere, Senior Director and Sales Lead, State, Local and Education at Nutanix. “By migrating their existing CAD, mobile public safety software, and police records management system products to Nutanix’s HCI-powered private cloud, The City of Allen’s IT team is able to better manage their systems in a faster and more secure way to better serve the City’s residents.”

The City of Allen is completing the first phase of its migration to its new infrastructure and is now preparing to enhance its mobile communications services. 

For more information, read the City of Allen case study.