Alabama DOT transformation journey started with a need for better and more modern connectivity at branch sites

The Alabama Department of Transportation had an eye toward connectivity in its recent digital transformation journey, according to an IT systems specialist for the state agency.

For its transformation, Alabama DOT has won a 2026 Industrial Transformation Award in the Transportation category, and IT specialist Chris Wilson had plenty of technical details to relate to Smart Industry on how the agency gained connectivity and insight on state infrastructure. His was a really interesting take, and Wilson credited sponsor Cisco with helping to get the work done.

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Specifically, Wilson told Smart Industry, Alabama DOT has utilized Cisco’s industrial routers and switches to deploy traffic signal controllers, digital message systems, and traffic communication and cameras all over the state.

State-operated trucks patrol interstates there and can report back to traffic management centers. “Our biggest milestone is having cameras at every exit along the major interstates that run through the state of Alabama,” Wilson added.

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Reflecting on the past year to two years and Alabama DOT’s journey during that time, Wilson wrote that the state deployed SD-WAN (the virtualized network approach that uses software to manage, automate, and optimize connectivity) at all of its branch offices and data centers as well as at the RSA Data Center in downtown Montgomery to utilize mega port connectivity to Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform designed to help organizations build, run, and manage applications across distributed environments.

“This biggest challenge with all of this is migrating away from MPLS to either internet or Layer 2 Metro-E circuits and routing across them with SD-WAN,” Wilson added. “The other issue in this is our traffic management centers around the state where all the camera feeds and traffic information come back to have to be able to reach all their sites either on SD-WAN or on a layer 2 circuit.

“The other challenge was [Alabama Service Assistance Patrol] trucks and providing internal network connectivity to them and allowing them to send camera feeds back to the traffic management center when deployed to a wreck or stranded motorist.”

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Wilson again credited Cisco’s equipment and support. “Our network infrastructure is built on Cisco hardware. Their products and solutions were very beneficial in designing and solving our challenges. The key teams to this were the network infrastructure and ITS teams.”