The sooner you know about a network or line outage, the sooner something can be done about fixing it to minimise business disruption. This is the premise behind the Red Alert System, which notifies IT professionals and network administrators about backbone outages at Internet Solutions (IS) - planned or otherwise - via SMS or e-mail.
Says Richard Vester, change control and escalations manager at IS: "The Red Alert System was developed for our internal engineers to monitor network and backbone line outages. This proved very useful and before long, customers requested this service to alert them when problems arose on the IS network."
IS has invested substantially in order to enhance the current outage notification system. It is now personalised which reduces the amount of unwanted information and notifies clients of IS outages that affect their business directly.
The implications of the network or systems going down are potentially catastrophic. It is no exaggeration to say that an outage of even short duration can mean out of business.
Says Vester: "The service allows for client flexibility, for example, clients who use the IS fibre service may not want to be notified of outages occurring on the satellite infrastructure, as these outages don`t affect their fibre service. The Red Alert System allows clients to choose which type of outages they want to be notified of.
"The service is user-friendly, gives a choice of message format - for example e-mail and SMS - and caters for planned and unplanned backbone outages," says Vester.
"It is important that companies become more transparent when providing services that sustain business initiatives in the market, locally and internationally. We believe this is one more step toward that."
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Internet Solutions (IS) is SA`s leading provider of infrastructure foundations for electronic business and the forerunner in providing companies with effective connectivity solutions. At present, it connects over 1 500 organisations to the Internet and over 3 000 sites through its range of VPN solutions, thus forming the primary electronic business community in SA.
IS offers a fully managed environment together with expertise in areas such as Internet access, VPNs, hosting, dial-up, security and data management. Its best-of-breed infrastructure is without equal and has been the preferred choice of leading companies since 1993.
As the Internet industry leader, IS is also dedicated to sharing its success with others by providing improved access to education and information to all South Africans, particularly previously disadvantaged communities.