By Krithi Rao, Research Analyst - Communications Applications Group

First Step is Estimating Cost

Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the United States, made its appearance in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29th 2005. This hurricane is touted to be the most expensive natural disaster in the U.S., much worse than Hurricane Andrew and a humanitarian crisis along the likes of the Great Depression. Hurricane Andrew’s devastation in 1992 cost $35 billion, while the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake cost $15 to $20 billion. Although it is too early to predict the total burden of Katrina on the U.S. economy, initial estimates place it at $200 to $300 billion – an amount equivalent to what the U.S. government spent in four years fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One of the factors that have had a significant impact on the disaster relief operations is the breakdown of communications infrastructure caused by the hurricane. The disaster area is riddled with line breaks, damaged base stations and power failure. BellSouth Corp., one of the leading telephony service providers in that area, estimated that 810,000 lines still remain impacted in the disaster site. The company estimates that it would cost somewhere between $400 and $600 million to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina. The efforts would take four to six months to restore service in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.

In the face of such a calamity, charities are receiving donations that are aimed at providing relief to the millions of people displaced and affected by the hurricane. The American Red Cross has collected approximately $509 million for this purpose. However, assistance has not been limited to monetary donations. Many corporations are donating their products, personnel, and services to aid the relief campaign. Among this list are technology companies such as Avaya, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Vonage.

Vonage donated hardware and long distance services to allow some hospitals to make outbound long distance calls when service from the local long distance provider was unavailable. Intel worked with its technology partners (Avaya, Cisco, Dell, and SBC) to provide the technology that was essential to relief and recovery. More than 2300 wireless laptops were donated to the American Red Cross. In addition, wireless broadband infrastructure such as WiMAX was donated to first responders to set up more than 150 wireless access points.

Along with service providers, a number of technology equipment vendors have leveraged their portfolio to assist in the disaster relief efforts. However, vendors have had the restriction of assembling and delivering these solutions within days as opposed to weeks or months, which is the norm in usual customer deployments. AVST is one such company that has successfully stepped up to the challenge.

Applied Voice and Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is one of the leading innovators in the unified messaging/unified communications market. Through its unified communications platform, CallXpress®, and its speech applications module, Seneca®, AVST offers one of the industry’s most scalable and feature-rich suite of switch-independent unified communications solutions. Along with basic voice messaging, AVST’s solutions enable access to messages including voice mail, e-mail and fax from any voice or data device via a touch-tone, GUI or speech interface.

The company focuses specifically on messaging solutions and offers its customers an easy to configure, rapidly deployable, best-of-breed solution that integrates with most of the switches available in the market today.

AVST recognized the impact that the communications and messaging infrastructure could have on the disaster relief efforts. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, AVST has been quite involved in the donation of its solutions to organizations and the enhancement of capabilities for its existing customers to increase their relief efforts. The company has been able to adequately meet the requirement of setting up reliable messaging infrastructure or enhancing existing infrastructure to support emergency communication, very quickly. This success has been due to a combination of product excellence and company response.

AVST donated a 96 port CallXpress Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System to the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency. This system is responsible for disseminating information about necessary address, telephone numbers, and directions to citizens about the affordable housing centers that serve all the 64 parishes of the state of Louisiana. AVST’s partners, VoiceXpress of Baton Rouge and Greenwich Technology Partners of New York City, are providing the necessary scripting, voice recordings, installation, and maintenance at no charge.

AVST has also assisted the American Red Cross, an AVST customer since 1999, by providing additional port capacity that allows Red Cross to attend more incoming calls. AVST donated the software to increase the capacity of Red Cross’ existing CallXpress system by 12 ports. AVST’s partner, Mercury Communications, donated the hardware and the personnel to install the additional port capacity in an American Red Cross facility in Dallas, Texas. The system is expected to support Red Cross in the long term to meet call demand route callers to the appropriate resources using automated attendants.

AVST is also indirectly assisting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A global provider of engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance (EPC) services was recently contracted by FEMA to help in the rebuilding process of the disaster impacted areas. The global EPC provider, headquartered in California, received a $100 million contract from FEMA to assist in restoring telecommunications and sewage infrastructure to New Orleans.

The EPC firm, an AVST customer for a number of years, contacted Kayenell/Unity Telecom (a channel partner of AVST) on the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend. The call was to request for a 32 port CallXpress system that needed to be configured in 24 hours and to be in place at the site by the following Wednesday. The request was fulfilled by AVST and the system was functional in 24 hours. The system is primarily being used by FEMA personnel working on restoring telecommunications and sewage services in New Orleans. The system currently provides messaging capabilities for the FEMA operations but is expected to also perform automated attendant functions.

Matt Fairbanks, who works for Kayenell/Unity Telecom and already a believer in the product capabilities, was very impressed with AVST’s turn-around time: "We have been selling the product for 17 years and it is rock solid. We were very happy with the fact that when our customer came to us with this emergency and we, in turn, went to AVST, they were a true partner and acted quickly and allowed us to be a key service provider. We are paid to deliver to our customers and AVST added value by making things happen quickly."

This kind of reputation with its channel partners and its robust product offering has helped AVST further reinforce its channel. On September 14th 2005, the company announced that it had added thirty new resellers to its channel program this year, giving the company a total of more than 200 channel partners worldwide. AVST has been providing relentless support to its existing channel and aims to provide the same to its new partners.

AVST has this reputation with its customers as well. Gary Rogerson, who works for the EPC firm, had the following to say about his experience with AVST and Kayenell/Unity Telecom. "From a customer’s perspective, looking back on the installation, its an incredible feat that a customer could contact someone on the weekend and get this kind of work done in that amount of time. However, it was not surprising considering AVST’s and Kayenell/Unity Telecom’s historic performance. I did not feel at any time that I would need to find another avenue to provide the application. I knew that I would definitely have this system ready to ship out by Monday afternoon. I have had similar situations where both companies have gone above and beyond the call."

AVST’s solution allows itself to be deployed within a matter of hours as compared to other messaging products that take a week to be set up. The design interface is easy to use and enables new applications to be designed and deployed painlessly. Along with the solution, the company’s service also allows it to respond to urgent customer needs. Frost & Sullivan believes that AVST has been able to leverage its key differentiators of rapidly configurable and deployable products and excellent customer service to ensure that its clients who are engaged and involved in relief operations are able to meet their deadlines.

The list of companies that have leveraged their product portfolios to assist at maximum potential in the relief efforts does not end here. For example, j2 Global Communications, Inc. is another technology provider that has offered its application services free of charge to organizations assisting in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. j2 Global is a provider of outsourced messaging and communications services.

Similarly, EasyTel, a unified communications company together with Global Crossing an IP-based telecommunications solutions provider announced the donation of 10,000 toll-free phone numbers with phone, fax and e-mail messaging to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The companies hope that this will facilitate the victims of the hurricane to stay in touch with their family and friends over the coming weeks and months, regardless of their location.

Nortel is contributing in a number of different ways, one of which is doubling the call capacity for the federal emergency call center. This call center handles all federal disaster assistance calls for the three states hardest hit by the hurricane.

Frost & Sullivan applauds the efforts made by the above-mentioned companies and many others that are leveraging their businesses to aid in the relief efforts. While monetary and domestic equipment donations are important, technology donations and assistance are also playing a vital role in restoring normalcy back in the victims’ lives.