Case Study: City of Williamsburg achieves increased reliability and reduced capital expenditure with RingCentral cloud phone system

The City of Williamsburg, Virginia, Increases Reliability, Decreases Capital Expenditure with Cloud Phone System

The City of Williamsburg, Virginia — a historic municipality with about 15,000 residents and 200 city employees — faced a critical technology challenge: a nearly 30‑year‑old phone system that was hard to maintain, lacked modern features, and risked reliability for essential services. With budget approved for an upgrade, the IT director initially hesitated to move to the cloud but opened the RFP to new vendors after staff suggested exploring cloud telephony.

Working with Carousel, the city implemented RingCentral MVP for voice and fax plus RingCentral Video and Meetings, consolidating disparate systems into one browser‑managed platform. The cloud rollout improved reliability, added features like instant messaging and single‑dial, shifted most costs from capex to opex by canceling old circuits, and produced savings that were reallocated to other projects — all while employees quickly adopted the streamlined system.

City of Williamsburg

Mark Barham

Information Technology Director