In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud communications and contact centres, few companies can boast the level of reliability that Content Guru brings to the table. With a background deeply rooted in telecommunications and a track record of maintaining a "five nines" reliability, their storm® CCaaS platform stands out as a top solution repeatedly chosen by mission-critical sectors, both in the UK and worldwide.
In a recent chat with Martin Taylor, Content Guru's Co-Founder and Deputy CEO, we delved into the platform's role in maintaining the high reliability and availability of police forces, healthcare operations, and national power infrastructure.
The Root of Reliability
Storm's foundations can be traced back to Content Guru's origins in the telecommunications sector, long before the platform's inception.
"We didn't come from the on-premises world – we actually came from working in the telecom networks, and specifically live TV," Taylor explains.
"When it comes to live voting for shows like Big Brother or X Factor, the availability of network services is non-negotiable. And so, we've always had to operate to something like a five-nines standard."
In case you're not familiar with the jargon, 'five nines' reliability means guaranteeing uptime to approximately just five and a quarter minutes of downtime per year.
"While running a CCaaS platform is much more complex than counting votes, the principles are the same: dealing with surges effectively and being constantly available," Taylor notes.
The design ethos of scale and resilience, established in Content Guru's TV days, remains central to the company's core. In the past year, they’ve even invested further to create ESP (Emergency Service Platform). ESP is a variation of storm meant for emergency services only and offers 100% availability.
Serving the Police Sector
One of the mission-critical sectors benefiting from storm’s reliability is the police. Content Guru is currently the sole CCaaS provider that has contracts in place with the UK police, who use their platform extensively.
"Just this month, yet another English police force under the 999-emergency service umbrella started using our platform – Surrey Police. The feedback there has been enormously positive, which was a remarkable achievement for us," Taylor shares.
Another one of Content Guru's major law enforcement clients is Police Scotland, Scotland's national police force. Police Scotland are now in the middle of a complete migration into CCaaS, planned to go live early next year.
"This is a huge transformation project for them, as it merges several previously independent police forces in the country, and we're extremely proud to be their vendor of choice for it," Taylor notes.
The utilization of storm also extends beyond emergency services to services like 101, handling urgent, non-emergency police calls. The platform empowers these services with clever features like self-service in the queue, caller identification, incident logging, and more.
Empowering Healthcare
Similar to the police, the UK healthcare system has a two-tier setup, divided into Emergency Care and Urgent Care. Both utilize Content Guru's platform.
"Every 999 ambulance call in the UK passes through storm, and specifically through the ESP part it, to find the first available call handler anywhere in the country among the many regional ambulance services," Taylor says.
If the London service is extra busy, for example, the platform allows someone in a different region to pick up a London-based call. As all regions are interconnected with the CAD system, a call handler from that region can easily dispatch the relevant local resource – whether an ambulance or a paramedic on a bicycle – to the caller's location.
