Case Study: SkyAlert achieves life-saving, up-to-2-minute earthquake alerts with Microsoft Azure

Saving lives by alerting people about earthquakes before they strike

SkyAlert, a Mexican startup that provides earthquake early warnings via a mobile app and standalone siren devices, faced the challenge of alerting millions reliably when quakes strike without warning and the government system only covered Mexico City. Its legacy, one-way satellite technologies were unreliable and couldn’t scale to support nationwide coverage or bidirectional device management, so SkyAlert needed a more accurate, fast, and scalable solution.

SkyAlert built its own REDSSA sensor network and moved to a Microsoft Azure–based IoT platform (with IoT Hub, Stream Analytics, App Service and other Azure services) to enable real‑time, two‑way communication, color-coded intensity alerts, emergency chat and EPICENTER devices. In two months the app reached 3 million users and 40+ organizations, delivers warnings up to two minutes before shaking (40 seconds faster than the government system), has proven highly reliable, cut IT costs by ~45%, and can scale to new regions in under three months.

SkyAlert

Alvaro Velasco

Director of Marketing and Apps Development