Nichols Martin
The U.S. Air Force has authorized the deployment and operation of an emergency enterprise-wide mass notification system American Systems has built through a five-year task order awarded 2017.
American Systems said Tuesday EMNS is designed to comply with the Department of Defense Secure Cloud Computing Architecture requirements and alert USAF personnel in the event of a natural disaster or an installation security threat.
The system uses BlackBerry‘s AtHoc crisis communications suite and Microsoft‘s Azure infrastructure-as-a-service platform.
Peter Smith, president and CEO of American Systems, described the EMNS development project as an “example of what an innovative partnership between the DoD and the private sector can bring to bear.”
“The collaboration between all parties resulted in some real technological breakthroughs,” Smith added.
EMNS works by sending notifications to warfighters, civilians, contractors and visitors at Air Force facilities via multiple communication channels. Personnel will receive emergency alerts via Blackberry Athoc desktop software and mobile applications.
The system is linked to two database servers in Azure cloud regions.
