AtHoc's Network-centric Emergency Alerting System Now Fielded in Forward Positions to Rapidly Warn Personnel about Enemy Arms Fire
BURLINGAME, Ca. --[Emergency Notification News]- (October 2, 2007) -- AtHoc, Inc., the leader in network-centric emergency notification systems, today announced AtHoc IWSAlerts™ has been deployed in Camp Slayer, Baghdad, Iraq for the purpose of force protection. The Multi-National Force-Iraq is using IWSAlerts to provide emergency alerting for several hundred personnel, including rapidly warning them of enemy arms fire, impending attacks and severe weather conditions.
The alerts effectively and efficiently notify personnel of the emergency situation and provide details on how long the alert is in effect. Using IWSAlerts, military and civilian personnel in Camp Slayer rapidly receive warnings about threats, as well as clear instructions for action, such as temporarily increasing uniform posture in response to enemy fire. Within seconds, the operations center can activate pre-defined alerting scenarios, which turn networked computers into an integrated physical alarm system, capturing the attention of nearby personnel through loud audio and visual messages. The system can be integrated with sensors to automatically activate scenarios and warnings for incoming threats. Command centers now can proactively alert personnel of attacks and help ensure a quick and safe response.
AtHoc IWSAlerts was selected due to its ease and speed of deployment. AtHoc worked with local network technicians to install and configure the product within days. Army security specialists then ran numerous tests over a two-week period for information assurance certification before deploying the commercial-off-the-shelf software on their operational network. Initially deployed for Air Force personnel, the system was quickly extended to the Army and Navy who were co-located within the same joint command.
Source: Vendor Press Release
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Multi-National Force-Iraq Deploys AtHoc IWSAlerts in Camp Slayer for Emergency Notifications
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Siemens and AtHoc, Inc., Partner to Deliver Emergency Network-Notification to First Responders and the Military
Partnership adds emergency network-notification to Siemens HiPath Dispatch command and control console, extends Open Communications to public sector and military emergency responders
BOCA RATON, Fla. (June 18, 2007) --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- Siemens Communications, Inc.,[NYSE: SI] and AtHoc, Inc., a provider of network-centric (notifications delivered to computers/PDA's connected via WAN/LAN) emergency notification systems, today announced a partnership to integrate AtHoc's IWSAlerts™ into Siemens' HiPath Dispatch command and control console. The new partnership extends Siemens Open Communications to federal, state, local and tribal public safety responders, K-12 and higher education, and the military. The partnership enables first responders and the military to save more lives and property through improved communications coordination and interoperability.
HiPath Dispatch operators can send alerts through IWSAlerts at the touch of a button on their consoles. The HiPath Dispatch console enables command center and emergency operations center personnel to communicate with virtually any communications device anywhere, anytime through an IP network.
"Failures in emergency communications systems have exacerbated every major disaster of the last decade," said Charles Jennings, Chairman of Regional Alliances for Infrastructure and Network Security (RAINS), a nonprofit public-private alliance dedicated to developing and deploying Internet-based homeland security systems. "Internet-based systems-which offer increased survivability, greater flexibility and inherent interoperability-are the clear solution. Industry partnerships such as Siemens' and AtHoc's are essential to deliver the next-generation emergency communications capability that our country urgently needs."
"Siemens' commitment to improving public safety and military communications is based on meeting public safety organizations' and the military's needs, not just technology, and applying technology to best serve the public good," said Mike Lewis, Vice President of Federal Solutions at Siemens Communications. "This is our key role, to understand our customers' business and become their trusted partner and advisor. With technology as an enabler, we help our government, military, business and educational partners operate more easily and effectively during a crisis, when every moment counts."
About Siemens Communications, Inc.
Siemens Communications, Inc. is one of the world's leading vendors of Open Communications solutions for enterprises of all sizes, enabling business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG with about 15,000 employees globally and headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla.
For more information, please visit http://www.usa.siemens.com/communications.
Source: Vendor Press Release
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Air Force Air University and Air War College Deploy AtHoc’s Net-centric Emergency Notification System
When Emergencies Occur, Faculty and Students Receive Emergency Alerts through Computers, Cell Phones and PDAs
Burlingame, CA. (June 4, 2007) --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- AtHoc, Inc. today announced the U.S. Air Force Air University and Air War College has deployed AtHoc IWSAlerts™ for use on campus at Maxwell Air Force Base for emergency alerting. The university and college are part of the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command.
Air University provides the full spectrum of Air Force education, from pre-commissioning to the highest levels of professional military education, including granting degrees and professional continuing education for officers, enlisted and civilian personnel throughout their careers. As part of Air University, Air War College is the senior professional school of the U.S. Air Force. The program is open to lieutenant colonels and colonels or equivalent in Navy rank or civil service grade.
In addition to educating, the Air University and Air War College are responsible for protecting faculty and students, and to that end, they have deployed AtHoc IWSAlerts to quickly reach everyone if there is an emergency that impacts the entire facility or a smaller group within the campus. The educational facilities can quickly alert staff and students via the network to desktops and laptops with a pop up alert and an accompanying audio alarm.
AtHoc IWSAlerts is a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software product that uses a campus’ existing network infrastructure, including wireless hotspots and computer kiosks in rooms and buildings, to achieve mass reach about threats and account for personnel safety. IWSAlerts turns existing connected devices into personal alarm systems. Audio/visual desktop alerts will instantly appear on all PCs, and every handheld device will receive text messages. IWSAlerts can also integrate with existing telephony alerting systems and public address systems to provide a single point of activation to all alerting channels.
“In the past couple of months, there has been an increased emphasis on campus security for obvious reasons,” commented Guy Miasnik, president and CEO for AtHoc. “The DoD has been actively pioneering the use of AtHoc’s system to transform network-connected devices into effective alerting platforms. All campuses and facilities can learn from the best practices derived from the Defense Department’s experiences.”
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Hawaii State Civil Defense Selects AtHoc to Create State-wide Emergency Alerting System
Hawaii Deploys a Network-centric Alerting Offering that Makes it Possible to Achieve Mass Alerting, Interoperate with Other Agencies and Monitor Threats from Multiple Sources
Burlingame, CA (May 15, 2007) --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- AtHoc, Inc. today announced the Hawaii State Civil Defense (HISCD) has licensed AtHoc IWSAlerts™ software to build a comprehensive, network-centric emergency notification system (ENS) to support emergency response state wide.
The system has already been installed in the HISCD headquarters at the Birkhimer Emergency Operating Center in Diamond Head Crater, Oahu, and is intended to provide support to HISCD personnel, to the emergency preparedness community and to the Hawaii special needs community on a pilot basis.
Hawaii State Civil Defense, Hawaii’s emergency management agency, is responsible for preventing, protecting and assisting its islands and citizens during emergencies and disasters. The AtHoc system allows HISCD to use its existing network to reach personnel within HISCD and partner organizations through multiple redundant channels of communications - including SMS text-messaging to mobile phones, desktop alerts over IP-networks, telephony, TTY/TDD devices and pagers.
The system can be triggered either by HISCD emergency managers or automatically by monitoring events communicated from external agencies (i.e. National Weather Service). IWSAlerts also enable HISCD to trigger alerts to the public over the broadcast Emergency Alert System (EAS) using the same Web-enabled integrated system, which improves response time and bolsters public safety.
"We began talking to Hawaii State Civil Defense shortly after we began working with U.S. military installations in the region. It was quickly apparent that all of the defense-related agencies and programs on the island would benefit from interoperability, and AtHoc was already working with the Pacific Command, Pacific Air Forces and the U.S. Navy," commented Guy Miasnik, president and CEO of AtHoc. "Hawaii is now promoting alerting interoperability state wide, which is a critical step in creating a finely-tuned emergency response capability. It’s exciting to be working with HISCD and numerous other organizations across the state to help build this very important emergency notification infrastructure."
HISCD decided to create a far-reaching alerting capability that contacts various communities, including:
- HISCD personnel
- Hawaii’s emergency preparedness community - first responders, federal, state and local government agencies, etc.
- Special needs citizens
- Emergency managers for universities, health facilities, hotels, corporations, etc.
- General public via the media and EAS – emergency alerts broadcast to TV, radio and newspapers
AtHoc, Inc.
AtHoc, Inc. provides enterprise-class, network-centric (notifications delivered to computers/PDA's connected via WAN/LAN) emergency notification systems used for force and personnel protection, facility mass notification, public safety and critical enterprise communications.
Organizations such as the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, the Air University, Hawaii State Civil Defense, Boeing, PricewaterhouseCoopers and eBay use AtHoc's alert delivery and management systems for critical communication and alerting needs. AtHoc has partnered with market leaders including Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Siemens, Avaya, Unisys and others to bring these notification solutions to the public and commercial markets.
Phone: 650.685.3000 Fax: 650.685.3010
Email: sales(at)athoc.com Web: http://www.athoc.com
Does this bio need updating? Please send request changes here.
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MIR3 Selected by AtHoc as its Service Provider for Telephony Notification
MIR3 to provide Global Telephony Notification Services to AtHoc via inWebServices.
inWebServices Powered by MIR3 Intelligent Notification Initiative Continues to Grow.
San Diego, California --[EMERGENCYNOTIFICATIONNEWS] -- April 12, 2007 – MIR3™, the technology leader in Intelligent Notification™ solutions for global enterprises, today announced the company has entered into an agreement with AtHoc, Inc., a leading supplier of enterprise-class network-centric alerting systems, to provide AtHoc and its customers with telephony notification subscription services.
Under the terms of the agreement, MIR3 will provide AtHoc with the ability to trigger telephone notifications using MIR3’s global telephony alerting capabilities. As part of inWebServices, MIR3 exposes its products’ application programming interface (API) as a Web service, making it easy for partners and customers to integrate MIR3 alerting capabilities into their own alerting applications.
“Many of our customers use AtHoc’s IWSAlerts™ net-centric alerting system to fulfill their requirement for a single central notification system that manages and triggers all forms of alerting simultaneously. By partnering with MIR3, we now have a strong option for triggering telephony alerting,” stated Aviv Siegel, chief technology officer for AtHoc. “By connecting the MIR3 service via Web services, telephones act as an extension of our IP-based notification management system. This complements our ability to alert all IP-connected devices, send SMS messages, activate public announcement systems, trigger the national Emergency Alert System (EAS), and provide many more alerting capabilities.”
“After evaluating the notification services market,” continued Siegel, “it became clear that MIR3 has expertise with services oriented architecture and Web services – they know how to deliver on both. They have provided us with a true ‘plug-and-play’ solution that allows us to integrate and ship our products faster.”
MIR3’s chief strategy officer (CSO), Frank Mahdavi, commented, “AtHoc’s unmatched success in the DoD, government and large commercial enterprise markets makes them an ideal partner for MIR3. We believe that AtHoc is positioned to become the alerting standard in the DoD and within the government physical security and force protection market, and we’re excited to be part of the solution. Our Intelligent Notification platform has been widely adopted by system integrators, developers and communication solution providers, due in large part to our commitment to a service oriented architecture, ease-of-implementation, scalability, security and reliability.”
MIR3’s president and CEO Amir Moussavian said, “We came into 2007 with the clear goal of delivering our emergency-ready global notification capability technology to developers and partners through the inWebServices Powered by MIR3 Intelligent Notification initiative. AtHoc’s partnership is important to us and we believe that this agreement illustrates MIR3’s technology lead in global enterprise notification. We’re deployed by the largest businesses across diverse corporate functions such as sales and marketing, corporate communications, supply chain management and business continuity, and we look forward to additional partners joining us.”
MIR3 inWebServices is built on the SOAP 1.2-compliant XML J2EE standard. The inWebServices Powered by MIR3 Intelligent Notification program costs nothing to join, but registration is required. Developers and integrators can register for the program here.
Source: Vendor Press Release
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Wilford Hall Medical Center Deploys AtHoc on 5,000 Computer Network
AtHoc to Provide Medical Center with the Emergency Network-Notification to Quickly Alert Personnel Regarding Emergency Situations and Provide Instructions for Action
BURLINGAME, Ca. --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- March 27, 2007 – AtHoc, Inc. today announced Wilford Hall Medical Center has deployed AtHoc IWSAlerts to quickly reach personnel regarding emergency situations.
The Medical Control Center at Wilford Hall fills the critical role of keeping in touch with Lackland’s base command center to track emergency situations. The Medical Control Center serves as the eyes and ears for the medical community, and if an emergency situation arises, the group is responsible for alerting Wilford Hall personnel. When an emergency situation arises, the Medical Control Center uses AtHoc IWSAlerts to alert the more than 5,000 computers distributed across the five-building medical facility.
AtHoc worked with the Wilford Hall team to help tailor custom alerts for the hospital. Now the Medical Control Center team can create alerts for any type of scenario and determine which personnel should be alerted with instructions for action. The team continues to actively build its library of emergency scenarios for situations ranging from water contamination to pending weather conditions.
In addition to providing the ability for Wilford Hall to alert personnel with information regarding emergencies identified by the base command center, AtHoc IWSAlerts can be configured to pull feeds from numerous data sources, including the Center for Disease Control and the National Weather Service. Wilford Hall can elect to use these feeds to enhance its emergency notification capabilities further in the future.
“Wilford Hall fulfills an incredibly important mission for the Air Force. Effectively protecting the medical center, its personnel and patients depends heavily on situational awareness,” said Guy Miasnik, president and CEO of AtHoc. “Regardless of the type of emergency scenario – whether military or medical – Wilford Hall can provide alerts to its staff with specific instructions for action based upon the scenario and the recipient’s role within the organization. This level of granularity in the alerting process can help Wilford Hall contain and combat emergency situations.”
About Wilford Hall Medical Center
Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force’s largest medical facility, is a national resource, providing complete medical care to military healthcare beneficiaries in the south central United States as well as specialized care to patients referred from all over the world.
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U.S. Navy Awards AtHoc with Contract to Provide Network-centric Emergency Notification Systems Reaching up to 400,000 Personnel in Four Navy Regions
AtHoc IWSAlerts Helps to Fulfill the Navy’s Anti-terrorism Force Protection (ATFP) Needs to Rapidly Alert Personnel about Emergencies and Provide Critical Instructions
BURLINGAME, Ca. -[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- Sept. 12, 2006 – AtHoc, Inc. today announced the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego has selected and procured AtHoc IWSAlerts™ to serve as the networked alerting system for four of the Navy’s sixteen regions around the world. The Navy purchased twelve enterprise edition server licenses of AtHoc IWSAlerts as well as the add-on Weather Alerts Module. Using the Navy’s existing IP network, AtHoc IWSAlerts will be used to alert up to 100,000 personnel at each of the four regions within minutes of an emergency event occurring.
The AtHoc alerting system, named the Computer Desktop Notification System (CDNS) by the Navy, will be used primarily by the Regional Operations Center (ROC) within each of the four regions. ROCs operate 24/7 and have the primary responsibilities for all Navy installations and personnel within a defined geographical region. Their efforts are supported by Emergency Operations Centers (EOC) located on individual bases within the region, which will also be able to activate the system. CDNS will work in conjunction with installations’ outdoor PA and telephony alerting systems to deliver, within minutes, alerts to over a hundred thousand networked devices in each region, including desktops, laptops, PDAs and even cell phones.
“For a complex organization such as the Navy, effective emergency alerting isn’t just about distributing information. It’s also about pre-planning and managing the emergency notification process,” said Curt Kolcun, vice president of Microsoft Federal. “Using AtHoc IWSAlerts, built on Microsoft Windows and SQL Server technologies, the Navy can do exactly that.”
AtHoc IWSAlerts’ management system can determine who needs to be alerted to deal with a situation, figure out what types of information and instructions should be sent, decide who has the authority to alert whom and with what information, and also measure the overall effectiveness of the alerting process. It also includes organizational management tools that allow the ROCs and EOCs to assign varying levels of permissions to different operators. One operator may be authorized to send alerts to all personnel in a region while another would be limited to base personnel only, or even to personnel who are members of a specific tenant agency inside a base. This provides great value to the Navy, which manages multiple bases and tenant organizations within each region.