CHARLESTON, S.C., June 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "On April 16, 2007, all higher learning institutions changed," declared Rusty Bruns, chief information officer for Charleston Southern University, noting the tragic killings on that date at Virginia Tech University.

 

"Suddenly it was apparent that alert and notification systems were to be a requirement on higher education campuses, and companies no one had ever heard of were making their presence known throughout the country.

"The obvious question was, 'Which company is best and will provide me with a tool that will alert our students in case of any emergency?'"

Charleston Southern needed a system that was reliable and easily administered, since no new staffing would be added for the task, Bruns said. The required system would use both e-mail and one other method to contact students, faculty and families "to insure the message had two avenues for information broadcast."

"One other feature was important, and we did not know if this was even an option among the companies that offered this service -- verification of notification. It was important for the university to know that the message reached the intended recipient. Finally, it must be easy to implement and fully functional by the fall semester. A lot of requirements, and only the summer to research, select and implement the new system," Bruns said.

Charleston Southern officials researched potential systems and found that the offerings varied greatly. But, Bruns said, "we defined what we needed and soon found that only one company met our requirements -- TechRadium's Immediate Response Information System, or IRIS."

Bruns said TechRadium's White Paper on IRIS assisted the university in eliminating the competition, and "IRIS met and exceeded our requirements."

"We selected TechRadium. Our first test was comprised of the technology department. The data was e-mailed to TechRadium via a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to populate the contact information database. Exceeding our expectations, IRIS communicates the emergency message to cell phones, home phones, PDAs, e-mail, pagers and fax machines.

" I entered the one-line text message," Bruns said, "'This is a test of CSU's notification system,' and selected 'send.' From start to finish the process was under three minutes. The Director of Security's comment was, 'Wow, this is great!'"

Within five minutes of sending the message, Bruns said, a report was generated listing the notification verification. The verification read: "Human answered or voice mail was left." The entered text message was translated to voice.

TechRadium's IRIS system has "many other bells and whistles," Bruns said - - five levels of notification, from general to emergency; the ability to create and notify specific groups, no hardware or software to load, "and the price point is extremely competitive."

" In short," Bruns of Charleston Southern University said, "we now have a product that exceeds our expectations -- and will be fully functional prior to the beginning of the fall semester."

 

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Contact John Rodkey to receive TechRadium's White Paper on IRIS and to arrange a free demonstration of TechRadium's exclusive and patented IRIS system. John can be reached at 281-263-6301, or by email at JRodkey@TechRadium.com.

 

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