Company Offers Instant Alert in Crisis

By Ralph C Jensen · April 25, 2007

Q. What was the genesis of the Instant Alert notification service?
A. Before we get started here, I want readers to know that I graduated from the University of Virginia, where I played baseball, and we were fierce competitors with Virginia Tech. I just want to recognize the tragedy that took place there. As a nation and we at Honeywell are really sadden by this and our condolences go out to the families of the students and the whole Hokie nation relative to what happened on their beautiful campus.

The genesis for Instant Alert was born after 9/11, when we learned tragically how difficult it can be to communicate effectively in a crisis situation. I lived outside of Washington, D.C., and had three children at the time and we were unable to communicate with the schools and really didn’t reunify with the children until later on that afternoon and, quite frankly, until early in the evening. So a lot of stress took place at that point.

Instant Alert can send out thousands of messages virtually instantly to parents, guardians or others over e-mails, telephone, cell phone, pagers or PDSs, or by text messaging. It can send 6,500 text messages within a minute or more than 100,000 voice messages within 15 minutes. It gets the right information to the right people at the right time. It allows them to respond appropriately.

Q. How is Instant Alert Plus different? What’s new about it?
A. The initial offering was one-way communication, notifying parents, notifying the administrator of an event that took place. Today from the K-12, non-complex scenario to a complex scenario-campus environment, where you deal with tens of thousands of people at any given time—two-way communication. So you’re not only able to communicate with students, parents and administrators, it also allows a feature and a function to communicate back to our operators, so we know what’s going on. You’re able to ask: Are you OK? Yes or no. Are you willing and able to talk? Yes or no.

Another fine feature of Instant Alert is that it also allows first responders to have access to information and communicate. It accurately pinpoints where the emergency is taking place.

Q. How does Instant Alert Plus address unique needs of campus-like environments?
A. From an educational process, when you take a look at a university setting or a campus-like environment, it’s very complex with a lot of people moving around. I learn from my children; they are extremely versed at text messaging. As an event takes place, the leader or superintendent makes the decision to get that communication out instantly, regardless of where they are. He or she instructs students that an event has taken place, prepare yourself for a follow-up message once we gather more information. It puts the campus, and people on alert that something has happened, and there will be another communication that follows, instructing them specifically on what to do.

Moving from the K-12 environment to the more-complex campus environment, you’re dealing with masses of people. You’re dealing with tens of thousands versus just maybe hundreds to a thousand.

About the author

Ralph C Jensen
Ralph C. Jensen is editor-in-chief of Security Products magazine.

You can visit the company Web site at 1105 Media Inc. .

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