| We know that a strong
communications infrastructure is extremely important in
our regular day to day activities whether we're at the
office, on the road, or at home. What we often forget is
how much more important it is for a reliable system to
be in place during a time of crisis and emergency like
that of September 11. Yet it's during these times when
our service providers often fail us. How many of us were
frustrated by fast busy signals and the recording, "All
circuits are busy, please try again?" as we tried to
touch base with our loved ones? In some cases, people
were able to use a wireless phone or e-mail to when they
couldn't get through via the PSTN, but even those became
congested and bottlenecked with traffic. As it turned
out, the communications infrastructure suffered a two
pronged attack that day -- a massive surge in users in
addition to the destruction the World Trade Center, a
major communications center.
In response to the recent overload and disruption in
New York and Washington, D.C., a number of technology
firms have offered their services for free to help
families, businesses, and relief organizations stay in
touch and rebuild. Here's a short list of the companies
and services available.
Videoconferencing
Acoustic
Communications Systems announced the opening of
facilities in Minneapolis and Chicago for victims'
families. Their videoconferencing partners in the
affected cities are International Videoconferencing in
New York City, Net2000 Communications in Washington,
D.C., and RoData in Pittsburgh.
Similarly, PictureTel, Polycom, and Wire One are donating
videoconferencing facilities around the world. They are
also offering loaner videoconferencing equipment,
including wireless solutions and technical support
personnel, to emergency management organizations,
hospitals, and humanitarian relief groups to support
telemedicine and relief.
PictureTel is asking businesses and customers to
contribute to a central reference site where families,
businesses, and organizations can find locations where
there are videoconferencing rooms. To find these donated
videoconferencing rooms, please visit http://www.picturetel.com/
and follow the "Video Relief" tab.
Online Meeting Services
PlaceWare, a
real-time provider of online meeting services, is
offering its Web conferencing for 90 days free to any
emergency or governmental agencies and two weeks free to
affected companies who need to continue their
business.
VoIP Calling
eStara announced their
offering of free calls over the Internet for friends and
family across the continental U.S. Since these calls
will be traveling over dedicated data networks, they
will be able to bypass the congestion of the PSTN
lines.
Text Chat
LivePerson, a
provider of text chat software, is offering to donate
its live chat online software to companies affected by
this national tragedy, as well as individuals that are
still finding it difficult to communicate with loved
ones because of lack of phone and cell lines.
The only thing companies or family members need to do
to enable live text chat on their site or computer is
download the software in the computer they want to use
as the chat computer. The download takes about two
minutes and can be used on PCs or Macs. LivePerson will
provide 24-hour assistance. Additionally, the
click-to-chat button can be easily placed at the bottom
of any e-mail, enabling companies to send out
announcements to employees via e-mail with a Live Chat
connection that can be opened as soon as the e-mail is
received by the employee.
Services For Online Contributions
Paybyweb.com has
offered to handle overflow contributions for the American Red Cross
by accepting both online check and credit card
donations. If you are unable to access the American Red
Cross site, please try Paybyweb.com.
According to David Weiss, Paybyweb.com's president
and CEO, "We want to answer the call to Americans from
New York City to Los Angeles by providing them with a
safe, effective, immediate method of donating monies to
help reach those in need."
Intell-A-Check,
Corp. has also announced that its electronic check
processing services are being donated to the National
Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) to facilitate
the acceptance and processing of contributions for its
terrorist attack victim services.
Contact Center Support
CosmoCom, a
provider of IP contact center platforms, is willing to
provide their contact center software CosmoCall Universe
at no charge to organizations needing to rapidly replace
critical call center functions and/or deploy support
hotlines associated with this tragedy.
Several of CosmoCom's partners, many of whom
currently have existing capacity deployed in their
networks that can be put into service immediately, have
stepped forward to offer virtual contact center
services. In addition, several systems integrator
partners are willing to provide the necessary
integration and engineering work to support this
effort.
EDS is also
offering contact center support to the Red Cross.
Partnering with McLeodUSA and Patriot Communications,
EDS and its team of volunteers have been receiving
around 25 percent of the Red Cross's call volume.
Assorted Tech Services
Charles River
Consultants, with offices in US, India, and Canada,
is offering to set up disaster recovery services to help
rebuild critical business functions. These include
secure data centers; hosted fax, e-mail, and Web
services; technical help desk services, and more.
Cervalis, a
provider of outsourced IT infrastructure and managed
hosting solutions, is offering their services free to
organizations in need of re-establishing employee and
customer communications as well as IT infrastructure to
support business operations. Their services include
e-mail, interim co-location space, technical assistance,
and consultation to re-establish business.
3rd Millennium,
a communications, finance, and business development
consultancy, is also offering free communications
assistance to businesses including contacting employees
and families; developing crisis communications and
contingency plans; and reaching out to customers,
clients, and investors.
Expercity, Inc. will offer, free unlimited usage of
its new remote access service GoToMyPC for the following
30 days beginning September 11th. GoToMyPC is a software
that provides remote control of a PC from any Web
browser in the world, allowing people to work from any
location. For more information, please visit http://www.gotomypc.com/.
I realize there are probably more companies out there
lending a hand to the families, businesses, and relief
organizations, so I apologize for having left them out.
If you come across more tech firms donating their
technology products and services, please feel free to
e-mail me and I will be sure to add them to my list.
To the affected families, I am extremely sorry for
your loss, and am praying for your peace of mind and
healing during this time.
Mia Carley welcomes your comments at mcarley@tmcnet.com.
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