A countywide IT overhaul — with no interruption to county services

How one South Georgia county replaced end-of-life infrastructure in every department, consolidated a decade of accumulated vendors and circuits, and cut recurring telecom costs roughly in half.

Snapshot

Client: A county government in South Georgia
Sector: County government, public safety, courts
Scope: ~16 departments · ~80 managed endpoints · countywide
Services: Managed IT · Network & connectivity · VoIP · Cybersecurity · Low-voltage & CCTV
Relationship: Project work from 2020 · full countywide IT management since 2023

Results

$30,000

saved on server hardware by building in-house

~50%

cut in the county's monthly voice bill

6 → 1

internet accounts at the courthouse

0 hours

of business-hours downtime during migration

The situation

Like most county governments, this one hadn't so much designed its technology as accumulated it.

Sixteen departments had each solved their own problems over the years, and the results were what you'd expect. Six separate DSL accounts at the courthouse — one per office, one bill per office. A phone system approaching two decades of service. File and application servers running Windows Server versions that had passed end-of-support. A workstation fleet where roughly 60% were still on Windows 10 after it reached end of life.

None of this was causing a crisis on any given Tuesday. That is exactly what makes it dangerous in county government — the infrastructure works right up until the day it doesn't, and by then you are making decisions under pressure, with public services offline and no good options.

Southern Technology Partners had been handling project work for the county since 2020. In 2023 the county brought us in to take over IT for every department and put the whole environment on a supportable footing.

The constraints

County government doesn't get a maintenance window the way a private business does.

The tax commissioner's office, the clerk of court, probate and the tag office all serve the public across a counter during posted hours. The courthouse cannot close because a server needs rebuilding.

The Sheriff's Office and the 911 center do not go down. Not at night, not on a weekend, not for a planned upgrade.

Law enforcement systems carry CJIS and GCIC requirements that shape what is permissible on the network before anything else gets decided.

And every dollar is a taxpayer dollar, moving through a budget cycle and approved in an open meeting.

That set three non-negotiables on day one: no disruption to public-facing services, no compromise on public safety availability, and a cost story the commission could defend in public.

What we did

Servers

We replaced the county's aging server infrastructure with current, supported Windows Server versions — building six physical hosts in-house rather than buying pre-configured systems. That saved roughly $5,000 per server, about $30,000 in total, while delivering better specifications than the equivalent vendor-quoted hardware. Each host runs multiple virtualized servers, so the county gets more usable infrastructure from less physical equipment, with fewer boxes to power, cool and eventually replace.

Every migration was performed outside normal business hours. Departments arrived the next morning to working systems and no lost counter time.

Workstations

We moved the county's PC fleet to Windows 11 and began a rolling replacement of aging machines, taking the county from roughly 40% supported to fully supported.

Connectivity

Each courthouse office had been buying its own DSL service independently — six separate accounts and six separate bills for one building. We consolidated the courthouse onto a single fiber circuit and put each office on its own VLAN, so departments stay logically separated and secure while the county stops paying six times for the same thing. We have since migrated every remaining county office off DSL onto fiber, and deployed managed firewalls at every location.

Voice

The county's phone system was around twenty years old and costing approximately $2,200 a month. We migrated the county to VoIP and brought the monthly voice bill to roughly $1,100 — an ongoing saving of about $13,200 a year, with a modern feature set replacing a system well past its service life.

Security

We deployed and now actively manage endpoint protection and EDR across the full county fleet, and implemented security controls on county email. The Sheriff's Office network was rebuilt to align with CJIS and GCIC requirements.

Video

County CCTV was entirely analog coax. We moved it to HD IP cameras with 30-plus days of retention and integrated the system so the 911 center has visibility into county camera systems — turning a set of isolated recorders into an operational tool for dispatch and public safety.

The outcome

The county now runs on supported, monitored, managed infrastructure across all 16 departments, with one provider accountable for the whole environment instead of separate vendors for servers, network, phones and cameras.

The financial case held up in public. Recurring costs went down, not up — halving the voice bill and collapsing six internet accounts into one produced ongoing savings, and building servers in-house meant the capital spend bought more hardware than it otherwise would have.

And the county never closed a counter to get there. Every server migration, every cutover, every network change happened outside business hours.

If you manage a county, city or authority

This county's situation is the normal condition of local government IT, not an unusual one. End-of-support systems, vendor sprawl and duplicated recurring charges accumulate quietly over a decade until somebody adds them up.

We work with county and city governments, public safety agencies and school systems across South Georgia, and we understand the parts that aren't technical — budget cycles, procurement, open meetings, CJIS and GCIC, E-Rate.

Talk to us about your county's setup

Client details are generalized at the county's request. Figures are drawn from the county's own billing and asset records and are stated as approximate where they vary month to month. Named references are available to government purchasers on request.