But since the refurbishment project was bankrolled with a combination of public and private funding, the staff had to keep the tab-including personnel costs-within reason. Given the fact that the museum's IT department at the time consisted of Horio, one other full-time employee, and several part-time contractors, this would prove to be a challenge.
After devising a new data and telecommunications infrastructure plan, Horio and his team began the rollout for the updated facility. The new network, which is based on a Gigabit Ethernet backbone, links the main facility with a branch office located in Fox Plaza, about two blocks from the museum. A Cisco Catalyst 6509 switch resides at the core of the network. The infrastructure also includes 20 Catalyst 3524 switches, four Catalyst 2600 series routers, and two Catalyst VG 200s voice gateways. Two Cisco PIX firewalls stand guard in a redundant configuration.
There are two T1 lines to the PSTN, provided by SBC, in addition to analog backup lines. A T1 line links the museum to its branch office; another T1 from Equant provides connectivity to the Internet.
To reduce telecommunications costs, the museum converted to IP telephony. The bid-on both standard PBX systems and IP telephony-was initially sent to companies such as Cisco Systems, 3Com, and several smaller vendors, says Horio. Because the funding for the equipment came from the nonprofit segment of the budget, costs had to be kept to a minimum.
Ultimately, the pricing perks of Cisco's IP-based system were too good to pass up. "The IP phone system was cheaper than the traditional phone switch," says Horio. Also, because the system is easy to manage, it fell in line with the museum's goal of keeping administrative costs to a minimum, he notes.
One of the reasons Horio chose Cisco was that, in addition to beating out the competition on price, the company was the most flexible in working within the parameters of a nonprofit.
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