Canadian Startup Verelo Hopes to Save Lives with New Monitoring and Alert Services

A tech startup based in Toronto hopes to use its technology to save lives. Verelo points out how high the risk and danger can be when emergency systems fail. What happens when the 911 line goes down, or an airline experiences a systems failure?

“We are depending on computer systems more and more everyday,” explains Mike Curry, the CTO and co-founder of Verelo. “Ten years ago, it was unheard of to have your car connected to the internet; today, a lot of navigation systems connect to the internet to download the data you see on your cars navigation system.”

“The Internet is everywhere, including high-speed rail systems such as VIA Rail and Jets cruising at 20,000 feet—even on your child’s mobile device,” adds Andrew McGrath, co-founder and CEO of Verelo Inc. “The very thing that makes all of this possible, exciting, and convenient comes with caveats, which can be life threatening.”

“It has always been possible for things to go wrong. Technology is now another factor to add in the mix,” affirms Mike.

It’s not just about saving lives though. Manufacturers suffer huge losses when their products fail. More than $26.5 billion dollars is lost in revenue in the US per year from downtime, systems malfunction, and other IT related issues. Today’s data center outages can cost an average of $6,000 per minute. Plus, companies lose consumer trust, public reputation, and staff productivity. So what can be done? Verelo’s sub-minute website and app monitoring system is one solution, the startup believes.

“Although a monitoring system will not fix the problem, they can quickly notify key people,” says Mike. 

“One of Verelo’s key product offerings is its Emergency Response Line, we dubbed the 911 Conference System,” says Andrew. “If there is a problem, an employee can dial a toll-free phone number and it will automatically assemble your entire team in less than 60 seconds. Solve the problem, not the problem of assembling a team.”

And for a “small monthly fee,” Verelo says it can monitor your website, corporate servers, or other internet-based system for service outages caused by hardware failure or malicious users.