Mir3 to Enhance Notification Technology

Mir3 Inc., which last month launched INlogicNOW, a free version of its two-way notification service, this quarter will introduce a fuller-featured version for the enterprise.

INlogicPRO enables corporate managers to keep in touch with employees and lets employees keep in touch with each other and with customers through a rules-based notification engine that connects myriad devices in two-way interactions.

The software provides a rules engine that enables users, via a Web interface, to define workflow for notifying key personnel in a way that is similar to SMTP notifications in network management software. But INlogicPRO goes beyond simply sending short messages to pagers or cell phones and can establish interactions between any source (servers running enterprise applications or network management systems like BMC Software Inc.s Patrol) and any target (cell phones, wireless personal digital assistants or e-mail accounts), Mir3 officials said.

The rules engine performs escalation and cascading of notifications so that if an intended recipient does not respond at one contact point the message is sent on to another device or back to the sender depending on the workflow rules.

INlogicPRO supports SMTP. It has Java 2 Enterprise Edition, XML and VoiceXML interfaces and performs text-to-voice conversion when necessary.

INlogicPRO is targeted for such audiences as corporate IT groups, who can use it to more quickly troubleshoot downed systems, and for public safety and law enforcement organizations to speed up response times and improve control over people and other assets.

Corporate users can also use the system to communicate important events, such as those that occur during a disaster recovery process, or to call ad hoc meetings of mobile workers. Schools could use the software to enhance communications with parents of specific students, said Frank Mahdavi, Mir3s vice president of technology.

“We are going after markets with predefined rules and methods,” Mahdavi said.

Mir3s notifications go beyond those of a network monitoring system, like BMCs Patrol or Hewlett-Packard Co.s Openview, Mahdavi said.

“Patrol has monitors and some notifications—mostly it can send e-mail or page you and mostly only as a one-way notification, and it doesnt allow you to manage your devices,” he said. INlogicPRO “gives [Patrol users] flexibility and escalation rules. … Patrol is a network monitoring tool. Remedy [which BMC acquired last year] may add that to Patrol, [but] even then we will have a role to play because Remedy doesnt provide for bidirectional escalation of notifications.”

Unlike Mir3s INlogicNOW software, which is hosted by the San Diego company, the PRO version will be licensed software.

INlogicNOW, which is available now, provides the same notification capabilities as the enterprise version, except the user interface is limited to Web and e-mail access and has no administrator capabilities. The hosted version is free for 45 days, then is priced starting at $599 per month with 1,000 notification transactions and unlimited customer support.

Mir3 is in negotiations with telecom companies to sell INlogicNOW as an add-on service, Mahdavi said.

Pricing for INlogicPRO, which will ship this quarter, has not been set.