Brought up to ‘Network-Speed’

Johnston County, N.C., was founded in 1746 and today its government offices occupy 11 buildings.

Johnston County installed its first Keri equipment in 1999, in what was then a combined courthouse/law enforcement building. This system provided access to judges’ chambers and other high-security interior doors. In 2002 another stand-alone Keri system was installed.

“Right after the second stand-alone installation, we connected five other offices, storage buildings, and garages using a LAN – securing a total of 98 doors,” says Daniel Clifton, the facilities superintendent. In 2005 the county connected seven doors in its newest building to the LAN, renting fiber optic line from the local cable provider to make the connection.

The county uses a combination of PXL-250 and PXL-500 controllers across the eight-building networked installation. “We were especially pleased that we didn’t have to replace the PXL-250 controllers when we upgraded,” Clifton notes. “The Keri networking technology has reduced our cabling costs and hassles, and has allowed multiple remote sites to be managed as a single unified site.”

1 System — 0 Hassles

Cumulus Media is the second-largest radio broadcasting company in the United States with more than 300 stations in 56 markets. Phil Carabillo, the firm’s director of real estate, began consolidating station operations in each market. Part of the consolidation plan was to install electronic access control to differentiate access privileges between the 24/7 operations staff and the administration staff. He was referred to Paul Dominick of Global Systems, a leading systems integrator in central Pennsylvania.

Carabillo wanted to secure Cumulus Media’s Harrisburg, Pa., office, with the possibility of rolling out the system to the other 55 markets. He sought a solution that allowed him to access all facilities with one card and perform remote administration of the other locations. To accomplish this would require a single, centralized database of all facilities and users that would allow global changes without having to dial each facility’s local server.

Understanding the challenges of multi-location access control, Global Systems recommended Brivo ACS as the solution. “Web access was key,” Carabillo says. “I can travel around the country with one card and administer other locations from anywhere on the Web – that was tremendous. We also saved money on deployment costs… and the wireless option – it was a bonus.”