Archive for December 4th, 2008

AtHoc, Inc., the pioneer and leader in network-centric emergency notification systems, today announced that the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) has selected AtHoc IWSAlerts as its command-wide standard for unified IP-based emergency notification. Under the $3.4 million contract, AFMC will deploy AtHoc IWSAlerts across all 10 bases and tenant units around the country, providing mass notification and personnel accountability capabilities to all 125,000 active-duty military and civilian personnel.

The command-wide selection of AtHoc IWSAlerts follows on previous successful deployments at three AFMC installations – Eglin, Edwards and Wright Patterson Air Force bases – where the system is currently used to alert more than 30,000 people in case of emergency.

The new contract extends AtHoc’s solution to all additional AFMC bases via a centralized deployment that will allow AFMC leadership to reach all personnel across the command within minutes. AtHoc IWSAlerts will include centralized telephony resources and will also be integrated with local base-level telephony alerting systems such as DCC’s The Communicator!® NXT, as well as giant voice siren systems, to provide a fully integrated notification management system. With this unified approach, the time required to launch and manage a consistent alert across multiple independent systems is greatly reduced. In addition, each base will be able to trigger alerts to their own personnel to provide a local alerting capability.

“An integrated, centralized deployment of a mass notification system supports our key requirements to provide a unified, command-wide emergency notification system for AFMC,” said Colonel Richard Wesche, Deputy Director of Communications for Headquarters AFMC. “Once fully deployed, operators will be able to easily reach personnel at all AFMC locations or individual wings through desktop computers, mobile devices, telephones and our giant voice systems. The command will have the ability to reach all personnel, or specific groups, across the command, within minutes, and operators will be able to track alert receipt and responses, which is a critical function for personnel accountability.”

Due to the size of the deployment, more than 500 command post operators from across the command are expected to be trained in the use and operation of AtHoc IWSAlerts.

“For an emergency notification deployment of this size, AFMC requires high scalability, extensive communication support and incredibly quick and reliable alert delivery,” said Brian Roach, general manager, federal/Department of Defense group, Microsoft Corporation. “AtHoc IWSAlerts, running on the Microsoft platform, provides these enterprise-class capabilities combined with the security credentials required to support a deployment of this magnitude.”

“We’ve been working closely with AFMC on a phased deployment that has now led to their command-wide selection of AtHoc IWSAlerts,” said Andy Anderson, vice president of defense sector operations for AtHoc. “AFMC will benefit from significant cost savings and dramatically simplified maintenance by deploying a centralized unified alerting system. With this deployment, the net result is faster, more effective alerting for AFMC personnel. AtHoc is proud to now be supporting over 500,000 Air Force personnel with our network-centric mass notification systems.”

The system will be deployed on Dell Servers running AtHoc IWSAlerts with Microsoft Windows OS and Microsoft SQL database, and will utilize Cisco networking equipment.

About AtHoc

AtHoc is the pioneer and recognized leader in providing enterprise-class, network-centric emergency notification systems to military, government and commercial organizations for physical security, force protection and personnel accountability. Millions of end users worldwide, in organizations such as the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Hawaii State Civil Defense, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, NASA, Boeing and PricewaterhouseCoopers rely on AtHoc’s unified management systems for their emergency alerting and critical communication needs. AtHoc has partnered with market leaders including Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Harris, Siemens, Avaya, Lockheed Martin, Unisys and others to bring these notification solutions to the public and commercial markets.

For more information on AtHoc, please visit http://www.athoc.com.