Cloud Telephony

Sandy has had more than her 15 minutes of fame. Starting buzz in headlines and news feeds last week, this East Coast tropical-storm-turned-hurricane-turned-frankenstorm has turned out to be exactly as predicted. Some say the closest thing it can be compared to is the hurricane of 1938, some say it’s the first of its kind we’ve ever seen. There’s one thing that we have today to help face the storm that those in 1938 did not: our cell phones.

Though we have improved on a lot since 1938, we are not immune to power outages. East Coast electric companies say outages from Sandy have hit more than 8.1 million homes and businesses. New Jersey was hit the hardest with about 2.5 million customers out, about 62 percent of the state total.  However, what we see today is even though there are power outages, people still have a way to stay connected via smartphones.

When tropical storm Isaac hit this summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned to social media to update about the hurricane and offer safety tips, including how to communicate during an emergency. Included in these steps is turning to text messaging or e-mail, waiting 10 seconds before redialing a call, using a car to charge dead devices, forwarding your home number to your wireless number in the event of an evacuation and tuning into broadcast and radio news for important news alerts.

Basically, everything can be done on your cell phone in the event of an emergency, including making configuration changes to your system like changing a schedule to set it closed or recording an emergency voice prompt for your IVR system. You can also have your system call you and run you through instructions for recording a voice prompt.

Fonality (News - Alert), a provider of cloud communications and contact center solutions for growing small and medium-sized companies, offers solutions to help customers during outages. Fonality offers a shared cloud solution, where a customer's system uses shared server resources in Fonality’s data center, dedicated cloud solution, where a customer’s system uses dedicated server resources in Fonality’s data center, and on-premises solution, where a customer’s system lives on-site with the customer, but important system data is backed up to Fonality’s data center. With the on-premises solution, the only loss will be audio recordings stored directly on the box (like voicemails, voicemail greetings, call recordings). But IVR flow, extension information, permission settings, VoIP configurations, etc. will all be safe.

With either of its cloud-based solutions, custom voice prompts can be easily recorded from any phone and put up from any computer with an Internet connection so customers that call in know the office is closed due to weather. A voicemail box can also be set up to e-mail or text transcribed voicemail messages to employees' cell phones.

For cloud-based solutions, extensions can be forwarded to cell phone numbers from any computer with an Internet connection. This means you're still available as long as your cell phone has a signal. Using HUD Mobile, employees' can chat with each other for free and conduct business (monitor queues for remote call centers (branch offices/linked servers) and place calls through their phone system).  Essentially, you can run your business from your phone if your Internet goes out. It's another layer that helps keep you up and running as long as possible.

Fonality also has georedundancy, data centers in diverse geographic locations, so if a natural disaster happens on the East Coast that affects service, customers can be migrated to a different server in one of Fonality’s other data centers.

With smartphones only improving and increasing in capabilities and features, social media is not left out from the effects of Sandy. Sandy has been the year’s second most-talked about topic on Facebook (News - Alert) after the Super Bowl, according to data provided to CNN by the social network. At its peak on Monday, Sandy scored an 8.34 on Facebook’s “Talk Meter,” which measures chattera bouta news event on a scale of 1 to 10 when compared with a baseline. The Super Bowl between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots earned an 8.62 in February. Tuesday morning’s Facebook overall theme from posts about Sandy is, “We are ok.”

Image via Mashable

The Internet is no stranger to outages, either. Earlier this year, storms in Virginia took down Amazon’s cloud servers and along with it, Instagram, Pinterest, Dropbox (News - Alert) and other popular websites. Disasters and accidents happen, but each minute of downtime costs money, creates headaches and hassle and leaves companies with unsatisfied customers. Providers of cloud and network services need to ensure they’re taking steps to prepare for instances such as these outages.