In higher education, the IT department is often the service provider for the institution's emergency notification system (ENS). For many institutions, the complexity of providing emergency notification to students, faculty, and staff makes using a local, on-premise solution unrealistic. But finding the right commercially hosted technical solution to meet the institution's emergency notification requirements can be a difficult process, involving participation from numerous campus stakeholders, including university police, public relations, risk management, and general counsel. Valuable lessons can be learned in the process, not only along the road toward the technical implementation, and learning from these lessons results in a robust, optimally effective emergency notification implementation and set of procedural best practices. This paper describes ENS technology strategies to consider when determining the best notification system for your institution, along with recommendations that will help you make implementation and usage decisions.