xMatters Teams with Australia's Leading Wildlife Rescue Organization to Save Animals in the Face of Largest Bushfires on Record

xMatters (www.xmatters.com), a digital service availability platform that prevents IT issues from becoming business problems, today announced it is extending its five year relationship with WIRES (NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.), Australia's largest wildlife rescue non-profit, by donating access to the xMatters cloud service??creating a platform for action that ensures all rescue volunteers' talent and time is maximized for the benefit of animals imperiled or injured by record-setting bushfires. xMatters' smart notifications and closed-loop communications capabilities ensure the right volunteers are quickly sent to the appropriate incident location and that all onsite team members as well as remote veterinarians can be updated as rescues unfold. In the past 3 weeks alone, over 505,000 device notifications were managed through the xMatters platform, resulting in 2,683 accepted rescues by WIRES.

"Donating these cloud licenses was a simple decision for us as it's critical that the growing number of WIRES volunteers are receiving and sharing the incident information they need to save these animals, many of which are already on Australia's endangered species list," said Stephen Foster, xMatters vice president, Asia Pacific and Japan.

New South Wales is facing the biggest, and most devastating bushfire season in its history. Already more than twelve million acres (five million hectares), with one fireground larger than the greater Sydney Region, have burned, destroying habitat and food supplies, imperiling and injuring animals. As the situation unfolds, WIRES expects to receive a significant increase in calls for help once people return to the newly burnt out areas.

"It was a no-brainer to help enable people, like the brave WIRES volunteers, to supplement their skill sets in the same way we enable IT professionals in a business environment," said Troy McAlpin, xMatters CEO. "This is an ?all hands on deck' moment. I would challenge others in the IT industry to step-up and see what they can do to help."

As a non-profit working under a very tight budget, WIRES depends primarily on volunteers to deliver its rescue and care services. Once a volunteer completes WIRES training, their level of expertise, hours of availability and geographic focus are entered into the xMatters platform. From that point forward, xMatters automates identifying and dispatching volunteers to animal emergencies and ensures continuous real-time communications among all appropriate parties.

"xMatters has revolutionized the way we organize, deploy and conduct on-the-ground incident management to maximize volunteer talents and save more animals," said Leanne Taylor, WIRES CEO. "We can't imagine operations without it and our volunteers say they love it. It's vital to us under normal circumstances so you can imagine how much it means to us given the current situation."

WIRES, in continued partnership with xMatters, is also in the process of expanding its reach. Through a "collaborative rescue" program, volunteers from other animal rescue organizations are incorporated into the xMatters-WIRES platform. This allows WIRES to instantly broadcast notifications to appropriately trained volunteers, no matter what organization they are from, getting help to more animals even faster.

"This licence grant will go beyond dealing with today's emergency situation," said Foster. "The goal here is to help WIRES become even more efficient and tap into the strong public sentiment to preserve our native wildlife in Australia. We look forward to partnering closely with WIRES to build out new use cases that were previously not physically or financially possible."

How to Help

The demands placed on WIRES are greater today than ever. As a not-for-profit organization, WIRES is entirely dependent on the generosity of animal lovers for its operating budget. A WIRES fundraising initiative is underway and donations can be made via PayPal or credit card by visiting https://www.wires.org.au/donate/emergency-fund.

About xMatters

xMatters is a digital service availability platform that helps enterprises prevent, manage and resolve IT incidents. From the Global 2000 to small workgroups and innovative DevOps teams, organizations around the world rely on xMatters to maintain operational visibility and control in highly complex IT environments. By providing toolchain integrations with hundreds of IT management, security, and DevOps applications, xMatters allows organizations to automate key processes and streamline workflows. xMatters is trusted by leading global companies including BMC Software, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, DXC technology, Experian, NVIDIA, ViaSat and Vodafone. xMatters is headquartered in San Ramon, California and has offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.xMatters.com.

About WIRES (NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.)

WIRES is Australia's largest wildlife rescue organisation and has been rescuing and caring for native animals for over 30 years. It officially launched as a not-for-profit organisation in March 1986 with its mission to actively rehabilitate and preserve Australian wildlife and inspire others to do the same. WIRES has 28 branches and over 2500 volunteers who are involved in the rescue and care of wildlife in NSW and they assist many thousands of sick, orphaned, injured and displaced animals every year. For more information please visit www.wires.org.au.