November 15th, 2004
Cisco, Kids
The AMBER Alert system is a notification system that can let the public know when a child has been abducted and is missing. Distributed by email, electronic highway signs and broadcast television, it is named after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Texas back in 1996.
Today at the InternationalAssociation of Chiefs of Police convention in Los Angeles, Cisco Systems is demonstrating how its IP solutions, as well as the PhoneTop AMBER Alerts System from partner AAC Inc. enable AMBER Alerts to be distributed across Cisco IP phone networks. The town of Herndon, Va. was one of the first users, replacing its legacy phone and network systems with a converged Cisco network platform which its Cisco IP phones run on.
PhoneTop AMBER Alerts are powered by an XML software program that runs on the Cisco IP telephony platform.
If Cisco’s solution can help one law enforcement agency save the life of even just one beautiful child, its ROI will be both priceless and infinite.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
