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CASE STUDY  |  SLED PORTFOLIO

Public Utility / Water Treatment  |  California  |  AirGap Labs

FortiVoice Rescue: West Valley Water District

Stabilizing a failed first-ever FortiVoice Cloud and Contact Center deployment for a critical public utility serving 100,000+ residents - 160 hours absorbed pro-gratis, two war rooms, 72 hours continuous onsite.

160 Pro-gratis hours absorbed by AirGap Labs to see the engagement through

14 Nightly Fortinet patch cycles during first two weeks of stabilization

2 War rooms stood up simultaneously to manage production and patch testing

72 hrs Continuous onsite hours at the height of stabilization

The Challenge

West Valley Water District selected Fortinet's FortiVoice Cloud and Contact Center platform as part of a broader Fortinet infrastructure modernization. This was the first-ever deployment of FortiVoice Cloud and Contact Center - a platform still maturing in Fortinet's product portfolio at the time of implementation.

Fortinet Professional Services had originally scoped the engagement, but the hours allocated proved insufficient for the complexity of a first-of-kind deployment at a critical public utility. When the deployment encountered serious stability issues - with Fortinet engineering pushing patches and builds nightly for the first two weeks - WVWD needed a partner who could absorb the chaos and hold the project together.

Three compounding problems hit simultaneously: an unstable platform with daily firmware changes, a public utility whose mission-critical communications were at risk, and an engagement that had already burned through its allocated support hours with no resolution in sight. For a water district serving 100,000+ residents and businesses, phones not working is not an acceptable operational state.

The AirGap Labs Response

160 hours absorbed pro-gratis. Rather than stop work when the original scope was exhausted, AirGap Labs absorbed 160 hours pro-gratis to see the engagement through. A public utility's communications infrastructure cannot be left in a broken state mid-deployment. Protecting the client relationship and the Fortinet partner ecosystem mattered more than billing for every hour.

Dual war room structure. To manage the uniquely chaotic conditions of a platform with nightly builds, AirGap Labs stood up two parallel war rooms. The first focused on triaging current production issues - keeping existing functionality stable while patches were applied. The second focused exclusively on testing each new Fortinet build before it touched production, so the team knew exactly what each nightly update changed and whether it introduced new issues or resolved existing ones. This approach was not in the original deployment playbook. It was a proactive adaptation to an unusually difficult situation.

72 hours onsite. At the height of the stabilization effort, AirGap Labs engineers committed to 72 continuous hours onsite. For a water district with 100,000+ constituents depending on functional communications, remote troubleshooting was not sufficient. Being physically present meant issues could be isolated and addressed in real time rather than in the latency of a support ticket queue.

Stabilization and handoff. After the intensive stabilization period, the FortiVoice Cloud and Contact Center environment reached production-stable status. The full Fortinet stack - FortiGate, FortiSwitch, FortiAP, and FortiVoice - was operational, validated, and handed off to WVWD's team with documentation and ongoing support in place.

Solutions Deployed

FortiGate	FortiSwitch	FortiAP	FortiVoice
Next-generation firewall	Managed switching	Wireless access points	Cloud & Contact Center UCaaS - first completed deployment

Outcomes

• FortiVoice Cloud and Contact Center successfully stabilized and transitioned to production - the first completed deployment of its kind in Fortinet's portfolio, establishing a template for future implementations.
• WVWD communications infrastructure fully operational, protecting service continuity for 100,000+ residents and businesses across the West Valley Water District's service area.
• Dual war room model validated as an effective approach for managing deployments with high-velocity vendor patch cycles - a novel framework developed in real time that AirGap Labs now applies to complex first-of-kind deployments.
• Client relationship preserved and expanded - despite a deployment requiring 160 pro-gratis hours and 72 continuous onsite hours, WVWD remained a satisfied client and the engagement converted to a land-and-expand outcome.
• Partner commitment demonstrated at the moment it mattered most - staying in the fight regardless of original scope boundaries when a public utility's operations are on the line is what separates a true Fortinet partner from a reseller.

AirGap Labs is a Fortinet Engage Preferred Services Partner based in Irvine, CA, with deep expertise in Fortinet SD-WAN, firewall, switching, wireless, and unified communications deployments across SLED, enterprise, and commercial environments.

airgaplabs.com Irvine, CA  |  Fortinet Engage Preferred Services Partner