Effective Upgrade

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office provides law enforcement service to nearly 500,000 citizens living on Florida's Atlantic coast. The agency patrols Brevard County's unincorporated areas, operates the Brevard County Detention Center and supports 13 municipal police departments located in the county.

Like most law enforcement organizations, the Brevard County Sheriff uses an array of technologies to protect county residents. Applications such as e-mail and Web-based information systems have become fundamental crime-fighting tools for the office.

But growing information demands began to overwhelm the department's e-mail system and other Windows-based applications several years ago, said Charles Gray, assistant MIS director for the Sheriff's Information Systems Division.

"It's kind of ironic to think that we here at the Sheriff's Office have had e-mail for only about seven years," said Gray. "In that period of time, it's gone from a novelty to a critical application."

As the importance of e-mail increased, the Sheriff's e-mail servers struggled to meet the demand. "I had terrible performance problems," Gray said, "because we had pushed them beyond their specifications."

Windows servers in the Sheriff's data center also support Web-based access to the agency's case report tracking, jail management and records management systems. And they power the mobile data switch that links computers in patrol cars to state and federal databases -- a function that's vital to the safety of deputies in the field.

"Deputies use the mobile data system to query the state of Florida and the FBI's National Crime Information Center to see if the person they pulled over for speeding is wanted for murder," Gray said. "People could die if that system doesn't work."

Finding a Solution
In 2003, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office began an initiative to improve the stability, reliability and performance of Windows systems in its data center. After reviewing proposals from a number of technology providers, the Sheriff chose Gateway to deliver a turnkey upgrade that included new servers, storage and software, as well as the services needed to deploy them.

Obtaining a comprehensive solution was key to Gray, who noted that the Sheriff's small Information Systems staff included few Windows experts. "At the time, we were basically UNIX people who had learned a little Windows," Gray said. "I needed a vendor that could provide the full migration."

Gray, an IT industry veteran, also had another reason for wanting a single company to take charge of the complex project.

"I try to avoid the finger-pointing scenario by making one individual responsible for the success of the project on the vendor side," he said. "So I'm looking for a vendor who can provide all the pieces of the project. In this case, I needed hardware -- servers, storage, tape backup, etc . -- a variety of software licenses, installation services and software configuration services."

Gateway offered the best solution to Gray's requirements.

"Gateway came in with a better fit -- what they proposed to me in both goods and services was more in keeping with what I envisioned, and at a much better price," he said. "They proved more flexible, and quite frankly, more professional and responsive to our queries."

Impressive Performance
Over a period of about three and half months, Gateway deployed new Gateway servers, Gateway and SAN storage, and Gateway tape backup equipment in the Sheriff's data center. The company also upgraded the Sheriff's Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 e-mail software to Exchange Server 2000 and migrated the office from Microsoft's Windows NT Server operating system to Windows Server 2003.

"We went from an NT domain to a Windows 2003/Active Directory-type domain, which is a major change -- especially in light of the fact that we have a mix of Windows 2000 and Windows 98 clients with laptops and desktops," Gray said. "Another major piece