Two things are growing in the United States—innovations in communications technology and worries about disasters, both natural and man-made. Edina-based Amcom Software has a mission that covers both trends, ensuring that if the latter goes from worry to reality, it doesn’t derail the former.
Founded in 1984, Amcom began as a developer and maker of telephone and paging systems. It still does that. But it also has become a provider of emergency communications, including notification systems, computer telephony integration, paging management products, and Web-enabled contact software.
“Our major markets are health care, government, higher education, and Fortune 500 companies,” says Amcom CEO and President Jack Collins. “We tend to point to larger companies, and they demand a level of reliability. We have the types of applications for people who want zero downtime and instantaneous response.”
Amcom’s signature notification product is e.Notify, a software system that sends a message regarding an emergency, crisis, or business disruption to appropriate staff members—including hospital administrators, disaster recovery personnel, risk managers, and IT directors—or all employees via a variety of devices (PDA, cell phone, pager, fax, e-mail). It also relays instructions, logs responses, and forwards unanswered calls to back-up personnel. E.Notify users can build lists of people or groups to be notified, as well as dictate the order in which they should be contacted and the ways they can be reached. To keep communications secure, the system can also require a password before a message is sent or received.
“When you look at 9/11, the power outage in New York City, and Hurricane Katrina, you see pretty quickly that sometimes things break, and that can cause serious repercussions,” Collins says. “The federal government has become acutely aware that they don’t always have the ability to notify the people they need to reach. The thought process is that these things are going to happen, and they’re going to cause serious disruptions. When that happens, they need a notification system they can rely on.”
Amcom’s client list includes the U.S. Coast Guard, many universities (including Duke, Stanford, Yale, and Michigan), and several hospitals and clinic groups (such as New York–Presbyterian Hospital and Chicago-based Advocate Health Care). Collins projects revenue growth of 20 percent in 2006.
