A Customer Success
from the Experts in
Business-Critical ContinuityTM.
Meldkamer Noord Nederland Responding to Consolidation,
Productivity and Availability Needs with HMX Extension.
Business Benefits
• Facilitates IT infrastructure consolidation efforts
• Significantly reduces hardware and power costs
• Creates more worker friendly environment with increased work space,
less noise, and more comfortable temperature.
• Contributes to adherence of health and safety workplace regulations
• Enables faster and more efficient emergency response
• Delivers 24x7 system availability
Company
Meldkamer North Netherlands
Location
The Netherlands
Industry
Emergency Dispatch Services
Business Needs
Effectively and efficiently consolidate
dispatch services for police, fire and
ambulance services for three different
geographical districts.
Solution
Avocent® HMX Extender System
Meldkamer Noord Nederland (MKNN) designs and manages the IT infrastructure
of control rooms that handle all incoming emergency calls plus the coordination of
police, fire department, ambulance and other emergency service responses across the
northern Netherlands.
“All our computers have to be highly available and work
24x7. The Avocent AMX Matrix and the HMX Extender
System combine flexibility, stability and continuity to
give us the high availability we need, while significantly
reducing our electricity costs and the hardware
requirements on each control room desk.”
– Gerwin Bruynooge, Technical Project leader,
Meldkamer North Netherlands
When the need arose to combine the services of three different northern districts into
a single control room, MKNN chose Avocent AMX Matrix and HMX Extender Systems
to enable that consolidation, increase operational efficiencies, and enhance the
ambience of the control room work environment.
Cost-Savings and Productive Consolidation
Originally, each of the three northern districts of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe
had their own individual control rooms to support the emergency. That tripled
their investment in real estate, physical building space, telephone equipment, IT
infrastructure, education and people operating the control rooms. In an effort to save
on that expense and to simultaneously achieve higher quality operations, the districts
decided to consolidate operations into a single control room. Because it is designed to
physically separate computer desktops from the users in their work environment and
remotely control multiple computers from a single LCD and keyboard, the Avocent
HMX played a key role in that consolidation.
A Customer Success
from the Experts in
Business-Critical ContinuityTM.
“A single user might need access to 25 different systems from his desk,”
explains Gerwin Bruynooge, technical project leader for MKNN. “Without
Avocent AMX and HMX, that would require 25 LCD screens, 25 keyboards
and 25 mice on each of the 28 desks in our control room. With HMX we’ve
reduced it to 6 LCDs and a single keyboard and mouse per control room
desk. That’s a big reduction in hardware and a big savings in electricity.”
Perhaps even more important is that the remote control and access
capabilities of the Avocent HMX Extender System allow all of the
different computer systems to be moved off the desks in the control
room to a remote equipment room. Not only does that improve
the working conditions of the control room, but the system-sharing
functionality provided by the HMX systems enables further reduction and
consolidation of computer systems, as well.
“One of our major goals was to keep computer systems out of our control
room,” Bruynooge says. “Avocent HMX enabled us to achieve that goal,
giving us more space in the control room and allowing us to put those
noise and heat generating systems into a different room. That gives us a
quieter, more comfortable and worker friendly environment that makes
it easier for people to do their jobs and respond to emergencies in a less
stressful manner. It also makes it easier for us to comply with health and
safety workplace regulations.”
More Efficient Emergency Response
MKNN could use the AMX Matrix System to reduce the number of LCD
screens per desk even more, but the dispatchers need at least six screens
per desk to simultaneously watching for activity from the different police,
fire, and ambulance emergency services. With its current configuration,
the AMX Matrix System allows dispatchers to instantly switch the view on
any screen to any one of the 26 different systems that collect emergency
communications.
“One of the nice things about the AMX matrix switching system is that
it gives dispatchers great flexibility,” Bruynooge says. “The police, fire
and ambulance all have their own special systems. Instead of requiring
3 or 4 screens per system like we used to do, all of those systems can be
combined behind the AMX matrix. As a result, dispatchers in the control
room can access any of those systems from any LCD screen on their desk.
That makes it very easy for all the dispatchers. Avocent essentially allows
our people to work the way they need and want to work.”
Additionally, using an application developed by one of MKNN’s partners
that integrates with AMX Matrix System, dispatchers can automatically
bring up high priority alarms to a specific screen. “If a police officer or
other agent encounters a dangerous or difficult situation, he can press an
alarm that is sent to the control room,” Bruynooge says. “Our application
recognizes the alarm and causes AMX to present it on the dispatcher’s
main screen so they can respond faster and get the agent help faster. It
makes it easier to watch and prioritize all the alarms and communications
that come in. In an emergency, every second counts.”
High Availability and Reliability
As an emergency response service, around-the-clock uptime and
availability is critical for the MKNN control room. The Avocent HMX
Extender System contributes to the uptime and availability by enabling
IT technicians for MKNN to respond easier and more efficiently to any
system experiencing problems.
“Having our computer systems in a separate equipment room allows us to
service them very easily,” Bruynooge says. “If you put the systems on the
desk in the control room, it always creates a disruption for the dispatchers
when a technician has to service a system. So, by using the HMX systems,
not only do we eliminate those disruptions, but our technicians can access
systems much easier when they need to work on them.”
The quality and reliability of the Avocent HMX Extender System itself
further contributes to uptime by ensuring dispatchers can always access
any of the emergency services’ systems needed at any given time.
“In an emergency, you can’t tell someone to call you back in five minutes,”
Bruynooge says. “We can’t have any down time. All our computers have
to be highly available and work 24x7. The Avocent AMX Matrix and the
HMX Extender System combine flexibility, stability and continuity to give
us the high availability we need, while significantly reducing our electricity
costs and the hardware requirements on each control room desk.”
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