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Throwback Thursday: The Challenges of Securing a City

The Open Options and City of Belluve Success Story

Bellevue is the fifth-largest city in Washington, with a population of about 120,000, and is the high-tech and retail center of the Eastside. The city spans more than 31 square miles between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish and is short of the Cascade Mountains. The population is consistently growing and regularly becoming more diverse. 

The Challenge

The City of Bellevue quickly grew during 2005 and soon saw the need to expand its government facilities and overall security. Being a high-tech city, Bellevue had several requirements for sharing data across other business applications and integrating existing video and intercom systems for a well-rounded approach to security. They were using a Kalatel CCTV switch to monitor video and a Commend intercom system for communications. The goal was to interface these systems into the access control interface seamlessly. Other challenges facing the city were controlling several banks of elevators, parking control, and securing the prisoner transfer area of the police department and jail. 

The Solution

Open Options teamed up with Guardian security of Seattle, WA, to propose a comprehensive security solution that addressed all of Bellevue’s needs. The city implemented Open Options’ Universal ASCII Driver (UAD) to pull together both video and intercom communications. The initial access control project consisted of over 100 reader doors secured with Open Options open platform hardware. Open Options and Guardian worked with Bellevue’s IT department to ensure shared NT security across the network. They use OpenDX to share personnel data across the Active Directory and DNA Fusion database to eliminate redundant data entry. The entire project comprises all city departments, including PD and jail, across three buildings and continues to grow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On behalf of the Open Options and ACRE Family, we want to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving! 

Before we all take a break this week to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends, family, and loved ones, we want to send a quick message to let you know how much we appreciate your support and partnership. As you know, the ACRE family of brands continues to deliver global security systems for access control and intrusion detection as well as innovative video solutions with a communication networking and intelligent appliance portfolio. Our comprehensive solutions provided by ACRE’s family of companies (Open Options, Vanderbilt, RS2 Technologies, ComNet, and Razberi) help secure the highest valued assets of large and small customers operating in the private and public sectors. 

We are so thankful that we get to work with and support security professionals like yourself. During the week, the ACRE global and regional offices will remain open from Monday, November 22nd to Wednesday, November 24th providing world-class support from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT. Our offices will be closed in observance of Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 25th, and Friday, November 26th. 

Just as a friendly reminder, calls placed after hours, on weekends, or holidays are handled by our automated answering service. Follow the instructions to leave a message and callback number, and a representative will return your call as soon as possible. Please keep in mind any email directed to technical support may not be answered until offices reopen. *Additional charges may apply for phone support after hours and on holiday.

Thank you, and have a great Thanksgiving holiday!