IP Communications Featured Articles

The Houston Texans improved its business and football operations through a newly redesigned data center, network and voice over IP. The new infrastructure was installed at t NRGStadium as well as the headquarters of the McNair Group, the financial and real estate firm of Texans owner Robert McNair. It provides employees with many capabilities, including video calls, instant messaging and the ability to send office calls to mobile devices. The new service is much easier to manage, which saves time and costs for the IT team.

“From the start, we’ve catered to the needs of our season ticket holders and sponsors,” says Jeff Schmitz, the team’s vice president of IT. “How we communicate with our customers is a big part of our business. We’re definitely centered on unified communications.”

The new technology allows coaches to regularly make video calls to one another using IP phones. A new bandwidth has provided the IT team with the ability to build a fast wireless network for players and coaches at the stadium and practice facility. Like many teams in the NFL, the Texans use Apple (News - Alert) iPads to view playbooks, rather than the outdated paper versions. The wireless LAN provides coaches with the ability to deliver digital playbooks to players, which gives them more time to develop a game plan.

The Texans are the newest team in the NFL, beginning its inaugural season in 2002. In the summer of 2010, the IT team needed to incorporate servers and storage from the NFL to meet league requirements, while simultaneously boosting its own sever count to support future growth. IT solved the data center power and cooling problems by purchasing a high-end APC (News - Alert) Symmetra PX UPS and four new APC air-conditioning units. They also redesigned the data center, including hot and cold aisles to improve airflow and reduce cooling needs. The faster network not only ensures good voice quality, but also improves application performance and speeds video distribution throughout the stadium.

Overall, the new technology has been worth the investment, and employees enjoy the new phone system. Having modernized infrastructure, the Texans organization now functions more efficiently. It ultimately allows the team to focus on its main goal, which is winning games on Sunday.