BUSINESS BENEFITS TO eALERT
- Functionality to effectively deliver billions of alerts annually
- Seamless integration into existing platforms/systems
- Simple VirtualMTA configuration for each client
- Innovation to match complex disaster management sending patterns
Solution Overview
With digital messaging delivery rates now well over 5 million messages per hour, eAlert from MIS Sciences is the nation’s leading emergency alert notification system. eAlert’s clients include the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Defense, transit agencies, and several 911 emergency operations centers. These clients have diverse and complex sending characteristics with regards to prioritizing message delivery through various devices and configuring IPs. As the chief crisis management solution nationwide, it is essential that eAlert utilizes a delivery system with maximum reliability, delivery performance, and granular reporting features to meet its clients’ demands and provide time-sensitive alerts and messages to each type of audience. PowerMTA was the only SMTP server software flexible enough to supply these necessary features and easily integrate into eAlert’s current system without disruption. On integration with PowerMTA, Jeff Willis, a VP at MIS Sciences, said, “PowerMTA was ready to run ‘out of the box.’ The ease of configuring a VirtualMTA for each client and their unique attributes made deployment very simple.”
Challenges
Disaster management planning requires quick and efficient transmission of important information. These transmissions are detailed and must be well coordinated; the ability to relay critical information and instructions to multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplinary agencies is paramount. Therefore, as a high-priority immediate notification system used by emergency and government agencies, eAlert had two conclusive challenges to surmount. eAlert required the ability to satisfy each client’s exclusive sending patterns and policy based requirements with “one” comprehensive delivery solution. Given the urgent nature and high volume of these notifications, the solution also had to be a remarkably stable one, with the ability to analyze and report on each individual campaign’s performance based on deliverability.
Actions
It was obvious to MIS Sciences Corporation that PowerMTA was the most innovative delivery software that had the malleability and functionality necessary to perform the tasks required for their eAlert service. With PowerMTA’s APIs and merge capabilities, the company now serves clients such as the New York Metropolitan Transit Agency with confidence. Using PowerMTA’s VirtualMTA™ dashboard, the eAlert successfully delivers time-sensitive alerts to 1,000,000+ plus subscribers. Additionally, it may process multiple other email streams simultaneously. MIS Sciences Corporation required a solution to process over 5 million email messages hourly, given its diverse range of end-user devices. Furthermore, the detailed reporting provided eAlert’s clients with all the delivery performance metrics required.
Additionally, PowerMTA pioneered email authentication standards which eAlert required and implemented to strictly comply with ISP delivery policies. In some cases, the alert is rejected because it is being sent to an invalid email address. However, many advanced anti-spam filtering policies will cause a message to be returned because the ISP requires SPF and DKIM authentication. PowerMTA overcame this challenge through the implementation of PowerMTA’s DKIM verification tool, which allows eAlert to auto-generate a unique public and private key for outgoing messages, thus increasing the ISP’s natural inclination to steer these alerts to a user’s inbox, rather than rejecting or returning them.
Further, more government agencies such as the US Department of Agriculture and Economics Research are migrating to PowerMTA realizing the benefits as a stable and comprehensive platform for high volume digital messaging. PowerMTA will continue to evolve as the standard MTA for government agencies, Email Service Providers and Enterprises both domestically and abroad.
You can download case study here – http://www.port25.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/11/Port25_eAlert_CaseSt
