Staying connected during a disaster

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Worst-case scenario: Your firm must evacuate its facility, perhaps at a moment's notice.

Traditional disaster-recovery systems from IBM and Sungard keep an organization's data and voice communications connected, but what about the people? Scattered employees - corporate executives or government officials - need a way to communicate, regroup and continue to conduct business from anywhere.

Ascendent Telecommunications' new Continuity of Government (COG) system fills this need. AscendentCOG provides organizations seamless communications in the event of a telephone network outage or evacuation, the company says.

A server-based system, COG lets any remote device (cell, voice-over-IP or home office phone) perform like a telephone in the office, so single-mailbox, calling-plan and speed-dial features are retained. Users can dial the same extensions to reach the same colleagues they always do.

Ascendent's flagship product AscendentMX, which the company has offered since 1993, integrates cell and remote telephones to corporate phone systems, letting any remote device perform like a telephone in the office. When the user picks up either line, the other phone will stop ringing. Each time the remote user sends or receives a call on a remote device, the device first connects to the AscendentMX server, finds the user profile and provides a dial tone - a process that takes only a few seconds.

The new product, AscendentCOG adds useful features geared to helping key people in an organization, whether they are CEOs, high-ranking military officials, doctors or police. During an evacuation, an automated roll call feature simultaneously will call everyone on the system with instructions on what to do.

The network administrator can activate the feature remotely and program in messages and response requests such as "Press 2 if you've received this message,"' or "Press 3 if you've evacuated the building." COG also sends e-mail and Short Message Service messages.

"This is a step ahead," says Elizabeth Herrell, vice president of Giga Information Group. "But it's not for everybody. But when you need to reach key individuals, this is a good solution."

Events of the past year illustrate just how useful a product such as AscendentCOG can be. When the U.S. Senate's Hart Office Building was evacuated in January because of the anthrax scare, senators were each handed a cell phone on the way out the door. "But nobody knew how to call each other, how to receive calls and they were still somewhat dysfunctional," says Stephen Forte, Ascendent's co-founder and CEO.

Moreover, in case of emergency, most organizations rely on a "calling tree" system to disseminate information, in which the top people call all those one layer below and so on. "The problem with this method was illustrated during the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon building, during which an entire layer of the calling tree was disabled," Forte says. "People on the lower end didn't find out the nature of the crisis for some time. But with COG, a senator sitting on a tractor out in the middle of Iowa can still send and receive calls, without changing his behavior whatsoever."

Ascendent offers the military an additional feature called MLPP, which lets high-ranking officials barge in on calls of subordinates, disconnect the call and take control of the circuit.

The company can host the system at its Irvine, Calif., facility with SBC Communications, or it can be run on a private network with the back-up system residing in Irvine.

Ascendent is targeting federal agencies, the military and corporations. It recently installed a system for the U.S. Marines, and is working on locations for the Army. The firm also is setting up systems for the headquarters of customers Toshiba, Nextel, Disney, FedEx and Steelcase.

The component-based offering includes the Ascendent COG server and the Ascendent RS recovery server. It is designed for an organization that wishes to manage the entire system internally. An organization can also elect to purchase the Ascendent COG server and use Ascendent's hosted subscription service in place of a dedicated in-house recovery server. Pricing for this service ranges upward from $30,000 based on the number of ports and users supported.

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