Avaya Inc. has updated its crisis messaging platform to allow the creation of specialized messages to individuals within a group.
It’s one of several enhancements the company has made to version 2.0 of Avaya Notification Solution (ANS) announced on Tuesday.
“This is the first big scale revision” since ANS was launched in 2009, Amir Hameed, Avaya’s senior director for technical sales for the Americas, said in an interview
ANS is a Linux-based platform that can be integrated with almost any PBX and messaging system to send automated alerts over any media – email, voice, SMS, instant message, social media or digital signs — to any endpoint.
Staff can also be polled to ensure they received a message and need help.
Avaya ships add-ons for Aura
ANS can work with Avaya systems such as its Aura unified communications system and Communications Server 1000.
However, Avaya partners will also work with customers to integrate it with other audio-video communications and conferencing systems, Hameed said. ANS ships with a conference bridge so no additional hardware is necessary.
New for v. 2.0 is what Hameed called partitioning – the ability to send tailored messages to people within a group, such as managers.
Also new is the ability to detect if an automated message has been answered by voice mail. Rather than leave a message, the software can be configured to search its contact database for an alternative way of getting hold of an individual.
The software’s interface has been updated to make it more flexible, Hameed added, and reporting has been improved.
ANS is priced by its capability. A 50-port high availability system that can send a 30-second message to 1,000 people within 20 minutes lists at US$70,000. Conferencing is extra. A 150-port version can send messages to 1,500 people in 10 minutes.
ANS needs an eight-core server (or two quad cores) with at least 8 GB of RAM and 120 GB of storage. A high availability system needs two servers.
It supports VMware vSphere ESX 4.0