AlertNow - Capabilities

AlertNow is a web service designed to be available to users regardless of where they are, the time of day, or circumstance. AlertNow employs multiple data and call centers geographically dispersed throughout the United States. AlertNow’s main telecommunications facility is located on a dual self-healing network service and supports 99.99 percent connection reliability.

Security

AlertNow is an ASP.NET-based Web application and fully supports secure socket layer (SSL) encrypted web transactions. The AlertNow application is managed within Hosted Solutions, a SAS 70 Type II certified facility.

All school and district data is stored securely in the database and is encrypted in accordance to FERPA regulations. All data is continuously synchronized between the remote facility and the primary facility. If a catastrophic event were to occur, this data would still be available at a secondary facility with minimal or no impact to customers.

Scalability

AlertNow has superior expertise in call routing and throttling technology for delivering time-sensitive notifications. AlertNow maintains contracted service level agreements with multiple telecommunications service providers to initiate AlertNow calls across the United States. Proprietary algorithms allow priority calls to help avoid local telco congestion for fast, reliable delivery.

Reliability

The AlertNow service is designed to load balance all message processing requests via multiple geographically-dispersed data centers spanning all three electric power interconnects in the U.S. The AlertNow system transmits message requests in a simultaneous fashion regardless of the format of the message or the type of receiving device designated. Messages are delivered using both TDM and VoIP for voice calls with SMTP for e-mail and SMPP for SMS notifications to maximize throughput options in the event of a mechanism disruption.

Capacity

AlertNow has a demonstrated call capacity of more than 2.5 million messages per hour. AlertNow can also flexibly scale its system capacity to meet addition system demands.