The article states:
The business phone system's servers went down during a power test March 28, and the city's Information Technology Agency has not been able to resolve the problems, city officials told the I-Team.
I have to assume that the system was as old as the building, and simply did what 15 year old computers can do - died when power cycled.
The definition of "High Tech Headquarters" should not include reusing antiquated phone systems known to be at the end of reliable service life. Maybe I hold too many high expectations when they claim "High Tech Headquarters". Swapping out old servers is not a science project, nor expensive in the grand scheme of things when lives are at stake. I'd fire them for incompetence. This was not a seamless transition. As old as LAPD is and all of the technical upgrades they has seen over the years (including phones), this project was poorly planned and exhibits unforced errors. I'd be furious. I'd be doubly furious that it hasn't been resolved after a month.
High tech is just a bunch of words and means nothing. To average idiot, a fiber line is "high tech," yet it's so cheap and easy to use that I pulled several lines through my house a few years ago just to future proof things. High tech is used to make YOU feel good about your tax dollars being spent on what's essentially technology from 100 years ago reimagined.
As for what their system is running on, this probably wasn't just x86 boxes running some hacked version of Asterisk. Most likely, it was some PBX system installed in 2009 with the building and never upgraded. That's long past end of life, and even with that recent of a date the VOIP landscape is littered with companies and products that no longer exist and have no service or parts available. You can't just "swap them out," because you need like for like and go ahead - call 3Com and tell them your PBX is dead. They don't exist anymore. There's a chance that whomever was providing service won't anymore either. I've run into both.
You'd be absolutely right to be furious that this hasn't been resolved, but unless the system was continuously upgraded, you have to point at people who refuse to give budgets for technology upgrades.
One would think that if someone (supposedlly they are an expert) was educated about PBX systems, longevity, manufacturer stability, this would have been addressed by the transition project plan with a complete phone system upgrade. Again, this points to the project manager. If the project manager brought up the issue during project plan development spec and review, and the bean counters refused the phone upgrade, okay, the project manager doesn't own this failure. The DEI bean counter owns it. I worked in "High Tech" all of my career, I have lived through bleeding edge tech, best in class expectations accompany that phrase. I guess I am offended that the term has been hijacked and is now just a "sounds great" selling point to unwary customers.
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