American Electric Power to Use Orsus Situator System for Situation Management

Sept. 24, 2007
American Electric Power selects Orsus' Situator for wide-scale deployment in 200 facilities across 11 states

Las Vegas, September 24th, 2007 - Orsus, the pioneer in the field of Situation Management, a new holistic approach to optimizing situation planning, response and analysis, has been awarded a contract for its Situator product suite with American Electric Power (AEP). The project includes integrating thousands of security devices, located in 200 remote sites, into a unified platform.

Situator is a security and safety Situation Management software for integrated control rooms. It creates an environment where all current and future technologies, people and actionable procedures are fused into a unified control and management platform. Situator leverages existing security investments and empowers security personnel to focus on exception management. With its advanced, yet easy-to-use planning tools, Situator helps transform routine and emergency plans into actionable, adaptive tasks and procedures and integrate them with virtually any security and safety devices, management systems, dynamic data sources and communication systems.

The AEP project marks the largest deployment of Situator for Orsus in North America. AEP is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with more than 5 million customers and operations that span 11 states and 200 different facilities, including power generators, transmission sites and offices. By the end of 2007, AEP anticipates that more than 25 of its facilities will be connected through the Situator platform from Orsus.

Situator's open architecture will enable AEP to unify numerous different and disparate security systems, such as access control, video analytics, and intrusion detection systems, under a single unified platform.

The systems integrator for this project is Adesta, LLC., of Omaha, Nebraska. Adesta has been a leader in providing innovative, turnkey solutions for advanced communication networks and security systems for nearly two decades. "Adesta's first priority is always to find the most effective solution for our customer", said Bob Sommerfeld, President of Adesta. "The product needs to be superior for AEP's present requirements with the flexibility to meet the future needs of one of the nation's largest energy companies. We feel Situator is up to this challenge."

With Orsus' Situator, AEP can integrate incident reporting, simulate security related events for training purposes and deploy system analysis tools to provide a comprehensive security approach. It enables the power company to also improve risk management, minimize vulnerability and comply with security regulations governing energy producing facilities.

"AEP is another example of Situator's ability to provide a scaleable, easy-to-operate Situation Management solution," said Gal Oron, President Americas at Orsus. "Power companies and other high-risk organizations demand the most forward-thinking security solutions. Orsus is proud to be able to meet these demands with Situator."

Situator reduces potentially costly human error, makes it easy to establish and maintain compliance with industry and government regulations and dramatically improves the speed and effectiveness of incident response and recovery while actually reducing operating costs.

Situator is available and fully supported in North America and around the world through a network of security and safety integrators. For more information, or to request a Situator demo, visit www.orsus.com.