The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), the body responsible for the construction of the new LUAS light-rail network in Dublin, has installed a Voice over IP (VoIP) network from Cable & Wireless over its existing data network.
The VoIP system enables the RPA to integrate data and voice traffic across its entire operation, which includes its headquarters in Parkgate Street, design offices and the site offices along the LUAS lines (currently under construction).
The Cable & Wireless VoIP system is comprised of a Nortel Meridian1 Option 11C telephone system at the RPA’s headquarters and Nortel Remote Office 9150 units at all site offices.
This enabled Cable & Wireless to integrate data and voice across the existing data network. By using standard digital handsets, staff can make calls across the LUAS IP wide area network (WAN) at no additional cost. The remote units allow all LUAS employees to benefit from the same wealth of applications, whether sitting in Parkgate Street or at a site office.
Two LUAS lines are currently under construction, with plans for more in the coming years. The RPA required their headquarters at Parkgate Street to be able to communicate easily and cost-effectively with its design office in Heuston and construction site offices along the LUAS light rail network. Cable & Wireless was the supplier chosen to integrate LUAS’ data and voice traffic across a single network using leading edge VoIP technology.
Tom O’Shea, IT Manager at the RPA, commented: ‘We wanted a flexible communications system that could be deployed quickly to temporary site offices as the need arose and which would minimise transmission costs by sharing the same connection required for data applications. We need our staff to have full and easy access to telephones and applications at each site office. Cable & Wireless provided us with a reliable, scalable VoIP network for seamless transport of high-quality voice facilities and secure data traffic.’
Cost was another major factor for the RPA, as Tom O’Shea explained: ‘The convergence of data, voice and applications onto a single integrated network reduces our costs significantly through lower bandwidth requirements and avoids the need to install and maintain conventional PABX equipment in site offices.’
Local government elects Witango
The Local Government Computer Services Board has bought a Web-based development tool called Witango from Piercom.
Witango is an XML-based application server and rapid application development tool. The LGCSB has bought a pan government licence for the tool in a deal worth in excess of EUR450,000. It will be used to develop applications for all national and local government departments including County Councils, Urban District Councils and Borough Councils.
This new technology will allow any Government department to rapidly develop and run any number of Web based applications with no additional licence costs. Manager of Government Services for Piercom, Fintan McKiernan explains that this will allow major cost savings for the government as many of the e-Government initiatives in different government departments have common elements and now an application developed in one department can be easily shared with other departments at no additional cost.
Training courses have already commenced around the country as Government IT staff become familiar with the new software package. Witango is easy to learn, with developers already familiar with Application Server Pages, Visual Basic or Java being able to learn development techniques in a four-day course. In this RAD environment the Witango writes the majority of the software by using drag and drop shortcuts, thus reducing development time and cost.
The e-forms project (now www.reachservices.ie) is built on the Witango platform and has helped secure Irelands recent No.1 position in EU e-Government benchmarking. E-forms is one of the most advanced Web based forms system in the world and can be used by citizens, businesses and the Government internally for their own forms.
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