Cassidian showcases latest version of emergency-notification product

Cassidian Communications this week will demonstrate the latest version of its Communicator! NXT emergency-notification technology used by a wide range of private and government enterprises, according to the company.

As with previous versions, the newest version of the solution is designed let enterprises notify appropriate employees when issues arise that warrant their attention, according to Chris Leonard, senior solutions engineer for Cassidian, who noted New York’s Brookhaven Memorial Hospital as an example.

“They’re using it to notify their staff, if they need a recall of physicians and things like that,” Leonard said during an interview with Urgent Communications. “There’s another hospital that integrates [our solution] with a system called Code Blue, so that, if a patient presses a button, it basically sends an API call to our system, and it will page the appropriate people to respond—not only via pager, but it also announces overhead to a particular zone that there’s an emergency.”

In addition, enterprises such as CitiGroup, United Airlines and Starbucks use Communicator! NXT to “notify their employees for business-continuity purposes,” Leonard said.

“Starbucks actually uses the system to notify all of its managers in each store, using text messages, as well as voice messages,” he said. “They also have what we call a bulletin-board service, which is an 800 number that allows their employees to call in and listen to messages that are pertinent to their region.”

Many of the enhancements to the Cassidian emergency-notification solution will be more apparent to system administrators, including support of the Microsoft Window Server 2008 operating system, multiple browsers, 256-bit encryption and single-sign-on registration for a specified work period, Leonard said. From a functionality perspective, perhaps the most notable enhancement is the ability to support two-way SMS traffic, he said.

“Previously, [two-way capability] was only via e-mail and phone call, but now we have the two-way capability [via short messaging],” Leonard said. “That helps a lot in an ‘Are you OK?’ scenario or some sort of roll call, where people can check themselves off of the list.”

Cassidian is exhibiting The Communicator NXT solution this week in Booth #100 at the Disaster Recovery Journal (DRJ) Fall World 2013 conference in San Diego.