Acadian on Watch's opens new hot redundant center in Houston, America on Watch

HOUSTON--Acadian on Watch opened its new hot redundant center, America on Watch, here, June 2. The new center is capable of running full or partial staff and maintaining up-to-the minute records. After Hurricane Katrina, Acadian, which monitors 50,000 accounts in 45 states, began the process of designing and building a regional redundant center that would be bi-directional. The two centers--the other is in Lafayette, La.--are now hot redundant to each other. The 5,000-square-foot center here was built by Acadian to accommodate its health, GPS/mobile, administration management, tele-health, and alarm monitoring units and personnel. "Since we announced this, we're really thrilled from the response we're getting from alarm companies," said Blane Comeaux, vice president of Acadian. "We are getting positive feedback from local gulf coast companies and we're getting requests for service from across the U.S. Investing in this back-up center shows our level of commitment to the alarm industry." In addition, the Houston offices will feature a new dealer marketing program, with new hires "doing sales and marketing and helping dealers market to the end users," said Comeaux. "We will work with dealers to help them develop their marketing strategies, so they'll be able to show up with professional literature and materials." Comeaux said that his company, the largest privately owned ambulance service in the country, has about 60 dealers right now. DICE engineered Acadian's new bi-directional hot redundant system. The bi-directional advanced setup will eliminate any monitoring interruptions caused by disasters related to weather or other emergency situations. The new system delivers data replication, data recovery, system analysis, and ensures accuracy of previously entered data. Said Mike Simpson, President of DICE Corporation, in a statement, "When Acadian approached us with their ideas for their new monitoring center we were up to the challenge. Our development and IT staff worked closely with them to deliver the bi-directional solution." For more on this story see the August issue of Security Systems News.