Server Alerts Via SMS Gateway or GSM Modem: Unique Identifier Question

I have some rather geeky questions about sending SMS messages I’m hoping someone can help me with.

  by  katielips 

What options are available for someone (or an organization) who wants to send custom SMS messages from a consistent, originating SMS number, which are triggered by a server script or email message? Of these options, which is preferable and why?

I have a friend who is a network administrator and wants to send different SMS alerts to his team members based on server conditions. He’s used the default SMS email carrier options (included in the English WikiPedia article, “List of SMS gateways“). The problem with those options (which use an email syntax like “domestic-number@txt.att.net”) is each SMS message is received on phones as originating from DIFFERENT SMS numbers. These are incremented sequentially, as shown in the screenshot below.

Instead of unique, sequential originating SMS numbers, my friend wants his server alerts to be sent from a CONSISTENT SMS address. This is the way SMS services like those offered by Twitter, Poll Everywhere, and other web services function using SMS.

What options are available for someone who wants to do this? I’d love to hear about open source as well as commercial options. If hardware options are available I’d like to know about those too.

My own formative research yielded the following options:

Open Source Options:

Kannel (an open source project)
– I’m not sure how an individual or organization runs it and obtains a unique SMS sending identifier, however.
– I’m also not sure if it’s necessary to purchase and use a GSM modem with this option. According to this FAQ from SwivelSecure, either a software-based SMS gateway or a GSM modem can be used to send SMS messages, so perhaps a GSM modem is NOT required. I don’t know if Kannel instances send using unique/incremented SMS numbers or with a unique number, however.

Zabbix

Commercial hardware options include: ServersCheck (instructions),

Commercial software options include: Ozekisms, Trumpia, MessageMedia, and CDYNE.

Please do not comment on this post if you’re a vendor or vendor representative, I’m interested in user feedback. I’m especially interested if you’re currently using a solution to provide custom SMS alerts for server status alerts.

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