Maximus selects Hammer Cloud to guarantee the performance of the US CDC COVID-19 Hotline Services

Hammer Cloud certifies FedRAMP-authorized cloud contact center deployed for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Billerica, MA – 29 June 2021 – Infovista today announced that Hammer, its contact center testing business, certified Maximus Genesys Engagement Platform for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This platform, already assessed and authorized by the US Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), ensures a flawless citizens’ experience across all channels – including voice, SMS, and web chat – when interacting with the government agency.

The certification was issued following the successful completion of intensive stress and performance testing, using Infovista Hammer Cloud that emulated more than 40,000 citizens simultaneously calling the CDC-INFO Center from across the US. The tests verified actual service levels in addition to quality of experience which pushed traffic at a rate in excess of 350,000 calls per hour.

As a result of the successful performance testing by Infovista, The United States Government can now confidently rely on Maximus to deliver large scale solutions to support the US hotline program for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts. This program includes the management of the CDC-INFO national contact center and publication system designed to help customers receive public health information and flawless citizens’ experience across all channels – including voice, email, SMS, and web chat – when interacting with the government agency.

“Every day, our goal at Maximus is to help citizens connect to the vital services they need from government agencies,” said Bruce Caswell, CEO of Maximus when receiving 2021 Wash100 Award. “The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a multitude of issues for Americans…Our work with states is focused on ensuring these citizens quickly get access to the benefits they deserve and drastically cutting down on the backlog of unanswered claims,” he added.

This validation of the Maximus Engagement platform, jointly built with Genesys and delivered through AWS, is a crucial step for Governments seeking to serve the people in times of crisis by leveraging cloud solutions. By thoroughly testing the capabilities of both the AWS East and West US regions, Hammer Cloud uncovered performance discrepancies between the two regions leading to improved operational decision making.

Performance testing complements the FedRAMP certification that ensures US Government agencies deploy services on specialized security focused instances of cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, or Amazon AWS. FedRAMP’ security focused assessments and authorizations protect citizens’ data, while performance testing contributes to guarantee their experience.  

“This is our fifth FedRamp authorized test in the past 12 months,” says John D’Anna, president Global Contact Center at Infovista. “We think it’s important for the US Government to insist contractors run through an objective third party performance and scalability test before putting it in front of the public. It is one of the only ways to ensure the integrity of the project,” he concluded.

Infovista’s Hammer Cloud (formerly the Empirix Hammer Cloud) delivers massive volumes of automated human behaviour interactions to speak to and navigate applications, mimicking real world citizen or customer engagement. This enables technology and business leaders to gain unique insights into their solutions’ ability to meet business objectives once released to the public.   The artificial intelligence inside the Hammer Cloud measures any slow down or disruption in quality of experience (QoE) allowing teams to optimize configurations or re-allocate resources efficiently. Hammer Cloud is also used to validate emergency scenarios and test the teams’ capabilities to restore services in case of a disruption.