Starting in 2008, built, upgraded and operated SMS Notifications infrastructure for external client. It can also receive and forward reply messages.
The system is running on Linux (at first bare metal and now as a LXC container inside ProxMox) and uses smstools3 to send notifications to end users using a custom framework built in PHP. The project major strength has been it’s relative reliability, stability and low maintenance over the many years of operation and despite major changes in infrastructure over the time (like the transition from GPRS to UMTS and then LTE SMS).
Over the years it has been used by multiple other projects, for purposes ranging from marketing from the company’s CRM, to critical infrastructure monitoring notifications.
On the business front, the integration into mass marketing to the business CRM was very successful and has provided good return on investment. Most people see SMS marketing as a more personal way of being approached, and while brevity is a must, existing clients often responded in a very positive manner. On the operational front, because it’s relative simplicity of integration (an SMS can be sent from any device that can perform a http POST operation) it has been used, among other things to monitor server overtemp and hardware issues, software crashes and issues, internet failure, UPS monitoring and AC fail, Internet dropouts and faults, etc…
This system has been seen as being so successful over time that another nearly identical set-up is used to automatically notify clients when their security systems record alarms.
In short, this project has been a solid and reliable long-term investment that has proved it’s reliability and worth multiple times over the years and one whose success can be replicated for your needs.