Summary: Hot on the heels of their recent Android announcement, Guardian24, the Belfast based market leader in Lone Working solutions, have announced the release of a fully functional iPhone application. With immediate effect, Guardian24 users can now download the lone worker application from the Apple ‘App Store’ as part of an organisational rollout.
Content: Guardian24 has announced that with immediate effect a fully functioning and integrated lone worker iPhone application is now available for their users from the Apple App Store.
Guardian24 have made a substantial development investment in order to create this important addition to the range of offerings available to their users. The company already provides access to its protection services through traditional mobile phones, Blackberry devices, Android phones, PDA’s, tablets and a broad range of specialist personal alarm devices. Until recently Guardian24 had provided basic services for iPhone users, but can now deliver a much wider range of iOS optimised services. Henry Woods, CEO of Guardian24 explained -
“Guardian24 became the market leader in this sector by delivering services on whichever device best suited both the organisation and the end user. In this way we provide the maximum flexibility and choice for our solution users. This approach has become even more important following the widespread move to ‘BYOD’ (Bring Your Own Device) where users run applications on their own chosen mobile phone technology. Some users may prefer a simple mobile phone; others may want to use an advanced smartphone while others may prefer to use none of these but instead to carry an alarm device. Guardian24 allows all of these preferences to be available – and mixed - within one overall system. In addition, Guardian24 also uniquely allows each end user to have the service available to them on two devices – in recognition of the growing trend to have both a work and personal device. With the launch of our iPhone app we now provide optimised solutions for almost every sector of the handset market”
In 2013 Guardian24 was named the winner of the industry’s premier award – the “IFSEC UK Lone Worker Product of the Year” for its first Android version of the solution. This has already been widely taken up by their customers in a wide range of organisations. Guardian24 has a long history of award winning solutions and of leading the market.
The development of the iPhone solution has been underway for some time. While some technology suppliers such as Blackberry and the Android ecosystem operate what is termed an ‘open development’ environment where system level code access is provided to developers to add, amend and adapt, Apple has achieved its success by operating a tightly closed (and therefore highly integrated) environment. Guardian24 understood this approach but also realised the development challenges specific to the Lone Working space. For some time Guardian24 has worked with Apple to overcome these specific Lone Working complexities and the newly released Apple App now delivers the best of both worlds.
The Guardian24 service effectively transforms a broad range of devices, mobile and smart phones into dedicated Mobile Personal Safety devices that go far beyond traditional single user ‘app’ technology. With Guardian24 the user can schedule their activities and timings. If the user ‘overstays’ their current appointment, Guardian24 will contact them to confirm all is well. If they can’t enter a PIN or enter a duress code then the system moves to ‘alarm status’ and streams audio. Dedicated, specialist alarm monitoring staff, working on behalf of the end user’s organisation, can listen in and advise the police or other relevant responders. Guardian24 also accurately details the device location at the same time to aid in that response.