The CASE application captures information that the alarm centre needs to mobilise the necessary resources to effectively respond to a caller's request or problem. This information comprises answers to the following questions: Who is the agent speaking with? What were the circumstances? Where did it happen? When did it happen?

The third application is called the Service Provider Information Network (SPIN), which is a structured database. "We have the details of about 22,000 medical and related service providers worldwide," says Baker. This covers general practitioners, specialists, dentists, ambulance services, hospitals and so on. An agent can search and identify the right type of service provider using all manner of search criteria.

There is, in fact, a fourth application as well, that underpins the above three applications. This is e-mail. It is especially useful in handling cases that involve several alarm centres, as illustrated in the hypothetical example of the Korean executive in Myanmar. "Our e-mail infrastructure is built around a network of 32 exchange servers," says Baker.

As International SOS is in a business where even a few seconds of downtime can be catastrophic, it has had to engineer several layers of resilience into its ICT infrastructure. For example, "all our telecom switches are battery-backed," says Baker. The IT infrastructure is backed up by several sources of power supply and multiple CPUs. It has built-in resilience from a service point-of-view as well. "We can effectively switch from one alarm centre to another, should there be a physical calamity at one of them. So, for example, Singapore can backup Hong Kong, and Sydney can do the same for Auckland."

On the horizon

International SOS has also been thinking about collaborating with Nortel in implementing a VoIP solution. This is because its investments in the Symposium and Meridian solutions have created a platform on which it can implement a VoIP solution with relative ease.