How Okanogan County, the largest by area in Washington, replaced a failing on-premises phone system with cloud voice inside Microsoft Teams.
Okanogan County is the largest county by area in Washington State and one of its most rural, with the smallest population per capita. Its sites stretch from the Canadian border in the north to the Grand Coulee area in the southeast, as much as an hour and fifteen minutes apart, across country where cell service often disappears.
A small county team supports roughly 300 users across dozens of locations, from administrative offices to remote solid waste stations.
For years, a small county team kept an aging on-premises phone system alive across one of Washington's most remote service areas.
When the platform's manufacturer filed for bankruptcy and the county could no longer add licenses, staying put stopped being an option.
Reviewing the old system, several problems stood out.
Every call passed through a chain of equipment before it ever reached a handset, so any problem meant hunting through many moving parts to find the cause.
Service could go down for as long as two days, with the carrier and the phone vendor each blaming the other while the county waited.
The nearest on-site help was hours away, across areas with unreliable cell service, so getting someone on premises was rarely quick.
The county wanted to keep using Microsoft Teams but had heard voice-enablement horror stories from peers at conferences and did not want to repeat them.
The carrier said it was the phone vendor's problem, and the phone vendor said it was the carrier's. It was so hard to get one person to talk to the other. Eric Fritts, Network Analyst, Okanogan County
When it came time to choose a path forward, the county did not jump at the first option.
Working with Maverick Networks as a supplier-neutral advisor, Okanogan compared several providers side by side. Ellie Becker brought comparable numbers from each and walked the team through the tradeoffs. Staying on-premises was considered and set aside, and another cloud platform was ruled out because it would have required additional Microsoft licensing the county did not want to take on.
RingCentral stood out for reasons that were practical, not flashy. A handful of staff already relied on it for HIPAA-compliant electronic faxing, so the county trusted it, and it was easy to use. Most important, it answered the county's biggest worry. Having heard voice-enablement horror stories from peers at conferences, the team did not want to hand its phone system to Microsoft to manage. RingCentral's embedded dialer let the county add full voice to Microsoft Teams while keeping the Teams experience staff already knew, with no added Microsoft licensing and no dependence on Microsoft for support. In the county's words, it simply made the most sense.
With the platform chosen, the rest of the plan fell into place: Starlink connected through the county's SD-WAN with automatic failover for real redundancy, a modern replacement for the aging life safety lines, full E911 compliance under Kari's Law and Ray Baum's Act with 911 center integration, and HIPAA-compliant faxing for the Health Department. Because the county purchased through OMNIA Partners and Sourcewell cooperative contracts, it skipped a formal RFP entirely.
If the old system had taught the county anything, it was to brace for disruption. This rollout put that worry to rest.
Maverick's Susan Stickrod and James Logan met with the county every week, working from a shared spreadsheet that laid out each step so the team could see exactly where things stood and what came next. Licenses and call queues were planned in advance, and, as the county put it, there was not a question the team could not answer.
It was a flip of a switch, and boom, we were up and running. Karen Beatty, Director of Central Services, Okanogan County
For an organization that had endured outages lasting days, a seamless cutover was its own kind of proof. And the support did not stop at go-live. When the county needs something now, it reaches out to Maverick and gets a fast, direct answer, a world away from chasing vendors who once pointed fingers at each other.
A modern, reliable platform that a small team can actually run.
Roughly 300 users now work in a single, familiar interface that is far simpler for a small team to administer.
With Starlink and automatic failover in place, an outage no longer means days without phones.
Instead of chasing vendors, the county reaches out to Maverick and gets a fast, direct response.
HIPAA-compliant electronic faxing keeps the Health Department compliant and productive.
Life safety lines are modernized and the county meets full E911 requirements.
Cooperative contracts removed the RFP, and a well-planned cutover brought everyone online smoothly.
As a supplier-neutral advisor, Maverick focused on matching Okanogan County to the right solution rather than selling a product, then managed the whole process, from discovery and evaluation through procurement, implementation, and go-live, with hands-on support that continues today. For a small team covering a vast, rural county, the result is a modern, reliable communications platform they can run with confidence, and a partner they can call when they need one.
They were wonderful to work with. I don't think there was a single question they couldn't answer, and they made the whole thing easy.Karen Beatty, Director of Central Services, Okanogan County
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