Everbridge launches first unified public warning platform to combat COVID-19

Everbridge, Inc. has announced that the company has acquired a global provider of cell broadcast solutions for safety applications, one2many, in order to provide a mobile-optimised, full-lifecycle solution for meeting and exceeding EU regulatory and other global initiatives for countrywide population alerting. The combination creates the largest and only public warning system combining cell-broadcast and address-, group- and location-based, multi-channel technologies. The new hybrid platform enables countries to protect against coronavirus; share updates on viral hotspots and pandemic best practices; coordinate first responders and healthcare resources; establish two-way communications with at-risk populations; and manage disruptions to transportation, education and other critical services. In addition, the platform also provides critical event management capabilities across a broad range of threats including natural disasters, terrorism, cyber and other security events.

Everbridge already leverages its CEM platform to deliver the world’s most widely used population alerting solution, reaching over 550 million people, with over 3,700 active deployments at the municipal, city, state and province level in thirteen countries including the US, Canada and India. The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the recent mandate requiring EU member countries to have a population-wide alerting system in place by June 2022, provides a major catalyst for population alerting systems adoption. As a global provider of countrywide deployments, Everbridge supports four European countries: Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands and Sweden. In addition to Europe, the company supports countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America including recent wins in Australia, Peru and Singapore.

one2many adds countrywide support in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, including in New Zealand. As the world’s market leader in 4G/5G cell broadcast with experience across more than 30 countries, the combination of one2many and Everbridge lays the groundwork for additional countrywide deployments.

“A comprehensive public warning system can be used to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, decrease the pressure on public health services, protect those that are most vulnerable and coordinate the appropriate volunteers and stakeholders when needed,” said David Meredith, CEO of Everbridge. “Now with the talented team and technology of one2many, the company that set the standard for how cell broadcasts should be used for safety, we significantly extend our lead in both technology and know-how to help governments around the world protect their residents and visitors while exceeding regulatory mandates.”

“Everbridge and one2many combine the most global deployments and, importantly, the deepest knowledge on best practices for large-scale population alerting in the industry,” commented Maarten Mes, Managing Director at one2many. “Customers no longer need to choose between the best location-based mobile messaging and the best cell broadcast offering – they can adopt the best of both capabilities in one single unified platform.”

Utilising a single approach to reach residents and visitors has historically required countries and municipalities to face a difficult tradeoff among speed, reach, the availability of analytics on both message delivery and population movement and the precision of targeting. No one approach is always best on all four criteria and differing use cases require, for example, the capability to deliver a very large number of messages very quickly versus the ability to target precisely who receives alerts. Everbridge’s new hybrid platform eliminates these tradeoffs and delivers optimised capabilities based on the needs of the use case.

The Everbridge platform allows for communications across all phases of an incident from preparation to alerting to follow up and recovery. It includes communicating with all stakeholders – those who can help, those who need to know and most importantly, those who are impacted. It allows for communication with people across a variety of different locations including where they live and work, to where they currently are and even where they have recently been or are likely to be.

The criticality of population alerting has never been more relevant than during the current outbreak of COVID-19. Applying the benefits of a single, comprehensive platform enables Everbridge to help protect the most vulnerable by providing special needs registries that work in concert with location-based targeting; to mobilise first responders, healthcare providers and volunteers; to ‘turn back the clock’ in order to communicate with people that may have travelled through a coronavirus-infected zone previously – either domestically or internationally – while strictly protecting individual privacy.

“The Everbridge platform also provides access to the industry’s largest source of vetted threat data and the broadest array of anonymised location data, combined with national registries and other contact data sources,” said Imad Mouline, CTO of Everbridge. “Everbridge and one2many have already deployed integrated countrywide public warning systems. The acquisition will allow Everbridge to take the existing integration with one2many and deliver on a further-optimised hybrid alerting capability.”

Founded in 2007, one2many is headquartered in the Netherlands and has served as a significant influencer with industry governance and standards bodies.