Over the Hillsboro and Far Away: How Continuant Connected one of Oregon’s Largest Cities

Location

Hillsboro, OR

Industry

Government

Solution

AV, UC Managed Services

Employees

~ 1,000

Background Challenge/Solution Looking Ahead

The Background

When driving down Highway 26 on your way from Portland to the Oregon Coast, you’ll drive through what looks to be between a large town and a small city. What you may not realize is that this is Oregon’s fifth largest city, with a population of just over 106,000. Its name is Hillsboro.

Founded in 1842, the city got its name from early Oregon politician David Hill. It’s since been incorporated into the town it is today, with a standard city government and a collection of beautiful farms and pumpkin patches.

Now, don’t make the mistake of selling farm country short. The City of Hillsboro knew when its AV and communications technology wasn’t meeting its standards and knew exactly who to come to for the solution.

Great aesthetics. Not so great acoustics.

It proved to be a challenging deployment, but in the end, Continuant pulled through and provided a full AV upgrade. Once the council chambers were complete, Continuant moved on to technologically refresh the city’s municipal court and large divisible meeting room.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was when a frozen water pipe located right above the AV room burst in 2023. Continuant rushed to replace the equipment. In the end, all was well, and Hillsboro knew more than ever that it could rely on Continuant.

That same year, the city came to Continuant once again to support its Avaya telephone systems. Through this, Continuant reduced Hillsboro’s voice expenses, kept outages and downtime to a minimum, and proved that it’s second-to-none in maintenance for legacy systems.

2024 came, and the move to the cloud for phone service could be put off no longer. The City of Hillsboro looked to decommission its Avaya systems, but that didn’t mean it had to decommission its relationship with Continuant. In fact, the City of Hillsboro opted to deploy Microsoft Teams Calling through Continuant’s unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform, Continuant Connect, along with a Continuant Connect Contact Center (C4).

The Challenge

Governments and businesses are a lot alike. Technology upgrades provide tremendous value for them, making life easier for employees and improving efficiency. The flipside is outdated technology has the inverse effect.

Low-quality AV does a lot to dampen the city council meeting experience. Similarly, poorly supported legacy voice systems can put kinks in the citizens’ attempts to reach their elected officials.

No city needs to deal with that sort of trouble. The City of Hillsboro recognized this and sought out support from Continuant.

The Solution

In 2022, Continuant first came on board with Hillsboro to update the city’s auditorium space, the Shirley Huffman Auditorium. Used for everything from city council proceedings to work sessions, meetings from city bodies and local organizations, and even special civic events, this space comes complete with high ceilings, natural wooden walls, and a glass back wall to allow people outside the space to watch proceedings.

Looking Ahead

Through each upgrade and deployment, the City of Hillsboro knew above all else that it could rely on Continuant for industry-leading solutions and services. Now the city has crisp audio and video in its auditorium and is currently undergoing a UC migration, with plans to go live later in 2025.

Continuant continues to provide managed services to support Hillsboro’s AV and UC environments. If the floodwaters rise once again, Continuant will be there to help.

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Why This Global Innovator "Sticks with" Continuant managed services