U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza in Italy Deploys AtHoc IWSAlerts for Emergency Mass Notification
Vicenza Now Using Unified Net-Centric Notification System Capable of Simultaneously Alerting Computers, Mobile Devices and Telephones
SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - February 17, 2009) - AtHoc, Inc., the pioneer and leader in
network-centric emergency
notification systems, today announced that the U.S. Army Garrison
Vicenza, located in Vicenza, Italy, has deployed AtHoc IWSAlerts™ to
meet its emergency mass notification needs. The deployment will provide
alerting to Vicenza personnel as well as personnel located at Camp Darby,
the Army garrison near Livorno, Italy. The Vicenza deployment of AtHoc
IWSAlerts further expands the Department of Defense's (DoD) extensive use
of AtHoc's solution in the United States and throughout the globe.
The Vicenza Garrison conducts base support and deployment operations in
support of the Southern European Task Force, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat
Team and other tenant units. The garrison also conducts law enforcement and
force protection operations in conjunction with its host nation, Italy. To
support its mission and protect personnel, the garrison evaluated IP-based
notification offerings and selected the AtHoc solution to protect its
population of roughly five thousand people.
AtHoc IWSAlerts complements Vicenza's previous investment in an outdoor
giant voice system and significantly increases the garrison's ability to
contact personnel indoors and off site when an event occurs. Alerts are
rapidly delivered through the IP network to all computer workstations using
pop-up visual alerts, and the computer speakers broadcast the message. The
system also delivers alerts to telephones, sends SMS text messages to cell
phones and can send emails to computers and mobile devices (including
Blackberry devices).
Prior to deploying AtHoc IWSAlerts, Vicenza was able to alert people
through emails, a calling tree and giant voice. Though these capabilities
were important to the garrison, it took time to trigger the separate
systems during an emergency, and Vicenza wasn't able to reach all its
personnel. The AtHoc solution unifies the many alerting channels for the
garrison so they can be triggered simultaneously through a single Web
interface, and it expands the number of alerting channels.
The deployment of AtHoc IWSAlerts provides an added benefit to Vicenza by
bringing its mass notification capabilities into compliance with the most
recently released Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) from the DoD. The April
2008 UFC recommends incorporation of a network-centric alerting system
(NCAS) as part of the facility's mass notification system and includes a
list of system features that DoD installations should acquire as part of
their mass notification strategy. Topping the list of features is the
ability to unify alerting forms using the IP network in order to simplify
alert distribution and extend the reach of notification systems. AtHoc
IWSAlerts complies with the recommendations outlined by the UFC.
"The AtHoc deployment at Vicenza is truly an enterprise solution. A single
deployment of AtHoc IWSAlerts protects the garrison as a whole, each of the
multiple tenant organizations, as well as Camp Darby, a completely separate
facility," said Colonel David W. Brown (Ret.), director of U.S. Army
operations for AtHoc. "The system can be used to alert all personnel at
Vicenza, and each tenant organization at the garrison can use the system to
alert their own people. The ability to use a single system for multiple
groups at a single installation -- or better yet at multiple installations
-- cuts down on initial costs for the Army as well as long-term maintenance
costs."
The AtHoc software is hosted behind the garrison's NIPRNet firewall and
runs on Microsoft-based servers and database.
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, U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, NASA, Microsoft, 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 and others
to bring these notification solutions to the public and commercial markets.
For more information on AtHoc, please visit http://www.athoc.com.