Case Study: American Red Cross achieves real-time global SharePoint monitoring and faster disaster response with SmartBear AlertSite

AlertSite is the Lifeline to Uptime for American Red Cross

The American Red Cross relies on a 2,500‑site internal SharePoint network to coordinate volunteers and disaster relief, but its legacy monitoring only pinged sites from a Chicago data center every 15 minutes and missed regional latency and component‑level problems. After major 2009 disasters, the organization needed real‑time, geographically dispersed testing and immediate alerts so IT could trace and fix performance issues before they slowed relief efforts.

The Red Cross deployed AlertSite (including DejaClick) to record real user clickstreams and monitor site responsiveness from multiple locations (configured every five minutes from Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles), with instant email alerts and daily reports. Within days they uncovered overload issues, scaled capacity, and regained faster recovery times; AlertSite now monitors roughly 20 million hits a month, provides on‑the‑fly regional visibility, and helps the Red Cross keep critical information flowing during emergencies.

American Red Cross

Michael Spencer

Technical Lead of Microsoft SharePoint Program