Alertisys gears up for accelerated expansion into currently under-served market
Finally, peace of mind for companies that operate critical systems.

March 15, 2001 - Fresno, California.  Perhaps the largest change to ever affect the way business is conducted has implications that have been grossly overlooked; at least that is what a new start up company out of Central California believes.  Alertisys, Inc.  is gearing up to launch a new service that monitors critical systems for downages or errors and then proceeds to notify you 24-hours a day in the event of a problem.   Matt Johnson, Chief Technology Officer explains, "We are seeing a tremendous increase in companies moving critical aspects of their businesses to computer systems.  The internet is utilized for mission critical processes in nearly every vertical market; law firms are using e-mail more than ever to send contracts back and forth. Distribution centers are sending live inventory feeds to their retailers, banks are enabling account information to their clients via the web, and e-commerce is being implemented by more companies than ever as an additional sales channel.  Even when a business is not utilizing the Internet for data transmission or sales, we still are finding that nearly every business has DSL or some other dedicated Internet connections in their office to allow their employees to operate more efficiently".  So where is the problem? Johnson continues, "With all the integration and re-engineering of traditional business practices to systems that allow them to conduct business and make money 24-hours a day, companies are overlooking the consequences of their actions.  After all, computers and Internet connectivity are usually the most volatile parts of your company's infrastructure.  Your support staff, if you have one, is usually only working 8 hours a day and to implement a 24-hour IS staff is extremely inefficient and costly.  We are finding most companies do not have a contingency plan for downages of these critical systems." Alertisys plans to partner with companies and offer these services in a cost effective and efficient way.  

More than just connectivity
Alertisys doesn't just plan to be your IS staff during their off hours. Plans are currently under way that will allow Alertisys to monitor system resources of servers within an organization remotely.  Resource problems or potential errors that are on the horizon and impossible for a human to know exists could be detected by our systems. "I can't tell you how many managers we have talked to that would love to have someone call them up and say 'Hey, Mr.  Jones we noticed your file server hard drive is almost full; in about 2 days we think you're going to run out of space'.  Currently, Mr.  Jones finds out there is a problem when the rest of the office does, and that happens to be when nobody can save their work, often times leaving the whole company unproductive until such time the problem is resolved.  We believe that in most cases, a single instance avoided can pay for our service for a year or more." says Johnson.

Scalability and Customization
Using a complex rules based system, Alertisys clients are giving virtually unlimited power in setting instructions on what to do in the circumstances of downages or errors.  Logical decisions can be made intelligently by the system based on type of error, duration of error, severity of error, or one of many other factors to determine how to handle a problem.  Schedules can then be configured to use that same information to determine what individuals from your organization to notify and by what means based on time of day and day of week.

Perhaps the biggest distinction for Alertisys is it's service which offers a 24-hour, 7 day a week calling center where you can speak with a human being when they notify you of a system downage.

"We like to think of our service as an insurance policy for your company.  We compare our service to that of a traditional alarm company that will monitor your building for break-ins or fires 24/7.  We do the same type of thing but with critical systems such as mainframes, databases, e-mail servers and websites which have become just as important to the operation of a business as the physical security and integrity of the building in which they operate." said Johnson.

Competitive Analysis
Alertisys isn't planning to just target companies who have never used monitoring services; they also plan to take this service to businesses that currently utilize technologically inferior services.   Johnson continued, "The primary problem expressed to us by our clients with competitive services is their inability to work with a complex decision making process.  Our clients, and most businesses, have different employees on call at different times based on their assigned schedules. These companies also have escalation procedures where management only gets notified after a given duration of error or severity of a downage.  Alertisys is the first service of its kind to be able to solve these problems through automation and offer a level of service unparalleled at a competitive price that will work with procedures already in place within a given organization".  

Keynote Systems (Nasdaq, "KEYN"), which has until now dominated the industry in name recognition with its Red Alert service is alertisys' main competitor.

Reliability of the Alertisys Network
Alertisys has developed a proprietary system in which each of their monitoring systems can interact with other monitoring systems. The system works as a whole with each part being assigned a task based on its workload or geographical vicinity.  Alertisys personnel refer to this network of monitoring systems as a "constellation", a term currently used for peer-to-peer satellite communications.   Johnson explains, "We like to explain the way our constellation of monitoring systems works by likening it to the popular Napster technology.  Like Napster, our systems utilize a type of 'sharing of information' to perform task from different geographical locations throughout the country. However, unlike Napster, Alertisys has implemented an advanced form of load balancing and process delegation that is intelligently controlled by these systems dynamically.   The architecture of our constellation will ensure that when our systems detect an error with one of our clients, that it truly is an error with the client and not with the monitoring system or with network activity in a specific part of the country, it also guarantees redundancy and accuracy of the information being reported "

Bridging the Gap for Executives
IS Departments are not the only ones to benefit from these services; alertisys offers what they call Post Resolution Analysis e-mails [View an Executive Analysis Email here].  These are emails intended for the executive management in a company.  The purpose of a post resolution analysis email is to inform management in laymen's terms and in a summarized view about the problem that has taken place.   Johnson says, "We plan to help bridge the gap between executive management and IS with our post resolution analysis e-mails.  The emails will go out to the executives who choose to receive them and will explain what happened, the duration that the device was on error, who in their company was notified and at what times, and any other information about the problem. But, that is not all, we also intend to have consultants send suggestions within these emails to managers to help guide them on preventative measures that they could take to help prevent that specific problem in the future." Johnson admits that part of the reason this is needed is because often times a CEO is intimated to offer suggestions on preventative maintenance and risk looking like they don't have any idea what they are talking about.  "We think it's time to end the tradition of executive management being held hostage by the IS department or their 'computer guy'," Johnson humorously adds.

What the future holds
Alertisys has big plans with intentions to have monitoring centers up and in place throughout the country by third quarter 2002.  "In addition to expanding our constellation, we are actively working to expand our capabilities and services; we are currently looking to work with companies like AT&T and Lucent Technologies to develop solutions for the telephone industry.  In the near future we will also be announcing products and services for auditing system backups and virus detection," said Johnson.

Alertisys is set for official launch in the fourth quarter of 2001.

For more information please email pr@alertisys.com