International Salvation Army

Founded by William Booth in London in 1865, the Salvation Army takes a pragmatic approach to charity and now operates internationally in 111 countries. The International Salvation Army is one of the largest non-governmental relief agencies, and is usually among the first to arrive with help after natural or man-made disasters. Based in London, the International Salvation Army’s headquarters manages secure online donations through its website www.salvationarmy.org.

When Hurricane Katrina hit earlier this year, the International Salvation Army was able to respond quickly to increased demand on its network by having a highly flexible network in place from managed services provider hSo. Hurricane Katrina donations created such significant demand on the organisation that the International Salvation Army quickly knew that more connectivity was immediately required. hSo was able to double the network speed within an hour which meant that on that one day, donations from around the world increased to just under $6m.

The International Salvation Army selected hSo to support its network in a competitive tender; Mark Calleran, Chief Information Officer, explains: “As you can imagine, being such a reactive organisation we have to be dynamic in our responses. Our challenge tomorrow will be different to the challenge of yesterday and the key to our success is flexibility. hSo came to us with a completely different philosophy to other suppliers – they were totally focused on meeting our needs and very cost conscious in their approach. We were stunned at how flexible they could be to every part of our requirement.”

Site to site data communications, including email, inbound access to the Salvation Army’s website and all international web-based donations are carried by the hSo network. The network also connects to the Salvation Army’s disaster recovery sites and multiple carriers are utilised to deliver high levels of resilience and reliability. hSo’s solution means that the International Salvation Army only pays for bandwidth increases – up to a gigabyte if necessary - as and when required.

Mark Calleran, continues: “We cannot afford to be unavailable at any time, so the resilience and reliance of our network is critical. As we also have to respond quickly when disasters occur, flexibility and scalability are also key, and this is one of the main reasons we selected hSo. Its managed service ensures we have the bandwidth, availability and flexibility to focus on supporting those people in need of our help.”

To explain the scale of donations the International Salvation Army handles – in 2002/2003 the total amount of donations received online was around $3m throughout the entire year. Following the Asian Tsunami, online donations (many from Australia and the South Pacific) increased to $3.4m during the course of one month. Even more astonishingly, during the month that followed Hurricane Katrina, the International Salvation Army processed over $40m of charitable donations.

Calleran concludes: “No-one can predict when disaster will strike, and we cannot sit idle or lose donations that could save lives just because we cannot increase our network bandwidth quickly enough. Not only does hSo deliver the network access and reliability we need on a normal day-to-day basis, but the support team responds quickly so that we also have the flexibility to deal with increased demand as soon as we need it. We are very happy with hSo’s managed service, and it contributed to our ability to collect so many donations following Hurricane Katrina - donations that will make a real difference to people’s lives.”

To find out more call us today on 020 7847 4510

hSo, Epworth House, 25 City Road, London, EC1Y 1AA
http://www.hso.uk.com

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