Mecklenburg County, located in the southwestern section of North Carolina, is a growing and vibrant region with a population of over one million people. The county includes America’s 15th largest city, Charlotte, and is governed by a nine-person Board of County Commissioners. The Board meets regularly to address the needs of the diverse citizens and business community, while more than 5000 county employees work to serve the residents. The county values frequent communication, outreach, and transparency, which are reflected in the culture of the Mecklenburg County government.
The Challenge: Increase Flexibility, Reduce Complexity
Mecklenburg County was an early adopter of live streaming its Board of County Commissioners meetings. They noticed that live streaming meetings on the internet helped expand their reach and provide citizens with access to past meetings, making government more accessible. This aligned with their goal of promoting transparency and community engagement.
Initially, they used a first-generation live streaming solution that required on-premise servers and software. Despite its functionality, they found it inflexible and costly to meet their growing needs. Specialized personnel were needed to operate and maintain the equipment, and there were additional expenses for hardware replacement cycles, maintaining redundancy for 100% uptime, and limited streaming capabilities. These drawbacks led them to seek a change.
The Solution: Ravnur Live Streaming and Video Archiving Platform
As a Microsoft Azure customer, Mecklenburg County sought Microsoft’s help in transitioning their live streaming to the cloud. Microsoft brought in Ravnur, a trusted partner and video streaming specialist who provided an Azure-based solution designed for ease of use and flexibility.
With Ravnur’s live streaming and video archiving solution, Mecklenburg County can now run an unlimited number of concurrent live streams, stream to multiple social media platforms, add live captioning at a click of a button, and more. Since Ravnur’s solution is a platform rather than a project, the county could go live in less than two hours. Additionally, Ravnur migrated Mecklenburg County’s existing video archive using their migration application which includes pre-built connectors for most of the common vendors.
The Benefits: More Streaming, Less Time Wasted
By moving to the cloud with Ravnur, Mecklenburg County was able to eliminate hardware capital expenditures and maintenance headaches associated with on-premise solutions. Ravnur’s flexibility also allowed the county to keep its existing encoders without having to worry about compatibility when choosing replacements. Equally impressive are the efficiency gains for the IT department and county clerk’s office.
Mecklenburg County estimates that they have saved more than 10 hours per week on tasks like managing networks and equipment, publishing live streams and recorded meetings, and responding to public and media requests for meeting clips.
