Godley Independent School District
10 Min.
Installation Time per Camera
50%
Less Expensive
25 Hours
Saved/Month
“The user experience is what we were going for, something that’s a lot cleaner and simpler for them, that just makes sense.”
— Marty Oliver, Technology Director
Background
Located in Godley, Texas, Godley Independent School District, serves approximately 2,200 students across five campuses. In a school district of its size, restrictions such as limited funding and staff are implicit. According to Godley ISD’s Technology Director, Marty Oliver, “as far as IT goes, there’s really three of us on the technical side that run the whole district.”
Challenges
The legacy system at Godley ISD was cumbersome. It required a great deal of maintenance by Marty’s team and, as he states, “With a limited staff of three, that’s a bit too much to keep up with.”
Frequently, one of the team members was needed to assist in locating the footage. It then required hours of sifting through the data. Once the applicable excerpt was identified, the team often encountered other complications in downloading and transferring to another form of media. “Not to mention,” Marty adds, “you had to do it on specific clients and other installs, they couldn’t just use any device.”
Why Verkada?
Marty and his team work directly with principals, assistant principals and other staff members—the people that use the system on Godley ISD’s campuses. He says, “They have a camera up there. And, if something happens, they feel like they should be able to see it anywhere, anytime, from any device. With the old system, that was not going to happen.”
Verkada enables a different approach. Built on a software stack that supports Godley ISD’s all-in-one cameras, it simplifies the monitoring of multiple locations. Using a centralized method to consolidate the camera feeds and information, the hybrid cloud video surveillance system provides the district with an intuitive security solution that is easily accessible.
“Verkada is interesting in the sense that we can basically set up the system, turn it over to our principals—people that actually use the system—and then let them work on it. We don’t have to think about it.”
The Results
The reaction to Verkada’s modern security camera solution and its intelligent, remote-access software platform has been overwhelmingly positive. Marty concludes, “It got our end users excited about their system again. The more people we can get involved with it and the easier it is to use like that, the more they’re all about it. Now they want cameras everywhere.”