Through Blackouts and Blaster Worms, Cosential Remains 100% Operational

Cosential announced today that while the northeastern U.S. and parts of Canada were plunged into the largest blackout in North American history on Thursday, August 14, its hosted application service provider (ASP) enterprise solution and websites/intranets for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry remained 100% operational. Cosentials mission-critical infrastructure performed exactly as designed, and the system provided uninterrupted availability for all users during the two-day blackout, while also maintaining a production environment impervious to viruses like the Blaster worm, thus protecting all customer websites, data and documents.

Through Blackouts and Blaster Worms, Cosential Remains 100% Operational. Cosentials Hosted ASP Enterprise Solution Proves its Value in Ultimate Tests.

WILTON, CT (PRWEB) AUGUST 22, 2003 --- Cosential announced today that while the northeastern U.S. and parts of Canada were plunged into the largest blackout in North American history on Thursday, August 14, its hosted application service provider (ASP) enterprise solution and websites/intranets for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry remained 100% operational.

Cosentials mission-critical infrastructure performed exactly as designed, and the system provided uninterrupted availability for all users during the two-day blackout, while also maintaining a production environment impervious to viruses like the Blaster worm, thus protecting all customer websites, data and documents.

Quotes from customers such as Perkins Eastman Architects, Franke Gottsegen Cox Architects, Tishman Construction, Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo and PageSoutherlandPage reinforce the value of Cosentials solutions and ASP delivery model.

Situations like the blackout and the Blaster worm just reinforce the value of our ASP model for AEC firms," said Dan Cornish, Cosentials CEO and Founder. Our system is not only a sophisticated industry-specific enterprise automation solution, but it is also a built-in business continuity/disaster recovery solution that addresses the financial constraints and productivity needs of AEC businesses.

"Our multi-million dollar mission-critical infrastructure, which includes redundancy, failover, backup power, intrusion protection and virus protection, is designed to keep all of our users up and running at a time like this, guaranteeing a much higher level of reliability than any firm could afford to provide on their own network."

Perkins Eastman Architects, with several of their offices located inside the blackout zone, has standardized on Cosential for enterprise business development and knowledge management. I know that many people have concerns about going the ASP route, but one of the big advantages of the ASP model benefited us during the blackout," said Martin Siefering, AIA, vice president.

The center of our IT infrastructure is in New York, where we were completely shut down like everyone else. However, several of our other offices were outside of the blackout-affected area and kept working through the blackout. Because of the Cosential ASP model, anyone who could get access to the Internet could access the wide array of knowledge that we have placed there."

While Franke, Gottsegen, Cox Architects New York City office was completely shutdown due to the power outage, partner Matthew Gottsegen logged into Cosential from home and was able to continue working. I had no problem getting in and accessing our information, just like any other day," he said. It gives me peace of mind to know that we can rely on Cosential to keep our data safe and our staff productive during a time like this. Cosential provides us with a big advantage over conventional client/server software," he added.

Darren Rizza, Chief Information Officer for Swanke Hayden Connell Architects in New York City, who is currently evaluating Cosential for the firm, decided to test their claims on Thursday night and logged in from a dial-up Internet connection while on vacation. I checked out the entire site, and I was able to access all aspects of the system with no problems," he said. I was very impressed that the system was available and performing as normal."

Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo in Honolulu, Hawaii, relies on Cosential to host its website and web content management application. Dean Kawamura, marketing coordinator, checked in Thursday afternoon when he heard about the blackout: Everything looked fine to me. I logged into [our Cosential] system, and I also checked our site, and everything worked perfectly," he commented.

Further attesting to Cosentials reliability, Julia Meade, marketing manager at PageSoutherlandPage in Dallas, Texas, comments: This application is very safe, secure and speedy. Whenever I have been working, the Cosential System has always been working. This system is available 24/7 from anywhere you have Internet access."

This is the second time in two years that Cosential has proven itself during a national emergency: Its systems were also 100% operational throughout September 11, 2001, and the days that followed, enabling all of their New York City-based customers to work remotely when they could not make it into their offices, and also protecting all of their customers websites and critical business data from damage or loss.

About Cosential, Inc.
Cosential is the leading provider of 100% web-native hosted enterprise automation solutions for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Cosentials proven best-of-breed solution suite provides integrated online client relationship management, project management, online collaboration, knowledge management, human resource management, enterprise reporting, web content management, enterprise integration and more, without the complexity and high cost of additional hardware, software and maintenance.

Many of the worlds leading firms have standardized on Cosential, including HLW International, Perkins Eastman Architects, Syska Hennessy Group, Cosentini Associates, Walter P. Moore and Associates, Kajima Construction, Tishman Construction and J.E. Dunn Construction, in addition to dozens of small and mid-sized firms, demonstrating Cosentials scalability, power and affordability.

With the ability to deploy instantly across any global enterprise without impacting ongoing operations, Cosential is setting a new standard for the AEC industry.

Contact:   Richard Nelson
Senior Vice President
Cosential, Inc.
203.515.0518
www.Cosential.com

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