If the east coast of the United States learned anything from Hurricane Sandy, it was that emergency communications are more important than ever. When people are dealing with downed trees, flooding and high winds, they need to know that they can get in touch with emergency responders quickly and accurately. This holds true for individuals in their own homes, of course, but it is just as important for enterprises to think about their E911 readiness.

So, too, must institutions of higher education consider, whether they need to make use of E911 hosted solutions to ensure the safety and security of the students and faculty.

More and more colleges and universities are deploying IP-based unified communications and VoIP telephony solutions on campus in order to save money and provide high-quality calling capabilities. But this technology provides challenges when it comes to enhanced 911 situations. When schools are implementing these next-generation communications systems, they give little thought as to how the technology will interface with the legacy E911 infrastructure in the U.S. today.

Problems with tracking phones were hard to address, and systems were updated in slow and laborious fashions.

Thankfully, AVAYA has worked with several select partners, including Conveyant (News - Alert) Systems and 911 ETC to address these issues. The companies have released E911 hosted solutions that focus on location discovery, on-site notification, event correlation and more. These solutions are suitable for any large enterprise, including colleges and universities.

To demonstrate their E911 hosted solutions to higher-education-focused audience, 911 ETC andConveyant will be joining Avaya (News - Alert) to exhibit from their booth as Avaya’s E911 Select Product Partners at the upcoming Educause conference in Denver, Colorado, which will be held from November 6-9.

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