As Chief Technology Evangelist of Pocketstop, one of my jobs is to evangelize our products and help potential customers and partners better understand our platforms and the infrastructure required to deliver them. Having said that, I would like to use this blog post to discuss Pocketstop’s RedFlag Notification System, running on Microsoft Azure.
What is the RedFlag Notification System?
RedFlag is an outbound mass notification system used for distributing crisis communications, emergency notifications and informational messages in a way that is simple, effective and convenient.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Unless you are a techy or happen to catch the Microsoft Azure advertisement for the Lotus F1 racing team, you probably have no idea what it can do. In case you haven’t seen it, the 30-second video posted below talks about how 200 sensors implanted on the car, report information to a database in real-time, which then allows the pit crew to make important decisions about the car, during the race. Best of all, all the server hardware that is required to collect, analyze and report back the data runs in Microsoft Azure. Much like the Lotus F1 team leans on Microsoft Azure to better understand how their car is performing, Pocketstop leans on Microsoft Azure, on a 24-by-7 basis, to ensure uninterrupted service while providing access to unlimited bandwidth, storage and compute hours for the RedFlag Notification System.
Why does the RedFlag Notification System, running on Microsoft Azure, matter to me?
Pocketstop is a Microsoft partner and a born-in-the-cloud ISV (Independent Software Vendor). The RedFlag Notification System runs as a cloud-based service in Microsoft Azure. Not only do we enjoy the benefits of state of the art application hosting, but we don’t have the operational challenge of supporting on-premises equipment, antiquated data center infrastructure or legacy computer hardware. All of our gear runs in the cloud, which means that most of our IT resources are spent on our applications and not on maintaining the infrastructure to deliver them.
How can I benefit from the RedFlag Notification System, running on Microsoft Azure?
RedFlag is a cloud-based application that is developed using the latest and greatest programming languages. Instead of spending time supporting and maintaining legacy software, our IT resources spend most of their time adding new features, working on custom integrations and making performance enhancements to the application.
How can I purchase the RedFlag Notification System, running on Microsoft Azure?
Since RedFlag is a hosted solution, there is no hardware to purchase or software expenditure. To get started, contact your RedFlag sales representative to schedule a demo. If you have a Microsoft EA agreement and want to run RedFlag using your own Microsoft Azure subscription, please contact me personally at brian@pocketstop.com to discuss options.
