Zetron’s SALUS platform is designed to integrate legacy and emerging tech supporting end-to-end communications for public safety, other sectors
By Donny Jackson, Editor, Urgent Communications
Zetron recently announced the release of SALUS, a platform designed to integrate legacy and emerging technologies that support streamlined, end-to-end communications for the public-safety community, as well as the utility and transit sectors.
Zetron CEO Scott French said SALUS—named the ancient Roman goddess of health, safety, and prosperity, according to Zetron—is the realization of a “high-level, long-term, utopian vision” within the company to integrate emergency-response communications, including LMR, telephony, data and broadband MCX services.
“We knew we had precedent, in terms of Zetron’s ability to fully integrate telephony, dispatch and other applications within our ACOM platform, but we knew that it was an older platform that needed to be revitalized,” French said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Based on that experience, we challenged our technology and engineering teams to reimagine the future. What would it look like if all of the offerings that Zetron enjoys today—across the entire emergency-response continuum—were available on a single services platform?
“The platform … will enable a services-based—or choice-based—approach for our customers to subscribe or ingest or even finance our variety of technologies in whatever means they want.”
SALUS represents the “foundation of a pyramid” of that enables users to drive multiple applications with a base-layer platform that is designed to promote efficiency and accuracy, French said.
“We’re engineering once and leveraging it throughout the emergency-response continuum,” French said. “At the platform level, you’ve got one source of data truth in real time and, through CAD, making real-time workflow recommendations on behalf of that operator. GIS will serve the call-taker, it serves CAD, it serves voice dispatch. It’s a one-time development across the entire platform.
“It’s seamless integration, whether it’s our [Zetron] application or someone else’s application. We believe in choice; we give our customers as much choice as possible. If a particular county or city says, ‘Hey, although I like the [Zetron] MAX Dispatch application, I prefer this other one,’ then that’s the right one for you. Let me tell you how we can integrate that with our MAX CAD, our call-taking or whatever. And the beauty of that is—because we’re starting at that base foundation level—it’s a relatively simple, inexpensive plug-in.”
This is possible because of the way Zetron architected SALUS, leveraging standards-based protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs), according to French.
“At the platform level, we’re building in the APIs that we’ve learned through 40 years in the business—all of the various interfaces to CAD, the learning, mapping, etc., that we’ve built—and we’re essentially pushing those down to the platform level and making them available to our customers and our partners,” he said.
“As long as you’re subscribed to SALUS in some form or function—it could be one application or several applications—you’ll have access to those interfaces.”
SALUS will be “iteratively release across the solutions portfolio beginning this year,” according to a Zetron press release about the announcement. The same document outlines the key beneficial characteristics of SALUS are that the platform:
“Delivers transformational customer outcomes – greater responsiveness, resilience and customer-led technology decisions;
“Extends advanced cloud capabilities to on-premise and hybrid environments, removing legacy limitations on scale and capacity to optimize resources;
“Permits operations to flex in critical moments with secure data sharing and a streamlined, central management hub to simplify oversight;
“Built-in safeguards and automatic failovers so SALUS solutions stay up through demand spikes and emergencies to ensure operations continue uninterrupted;
“Empowers customers to define their own path with a foundation that adapts as needs evolve by breaking free from vendor lock-in and rigid, one-size-fits-all bundles; and
“Future-proofs current Zetron solutions by providing a seamless, easier and less expensive migration for customers whenever they move to the SALUS platform.”
These functionalities can be available to a command center in a relatively short period of time—in fact, customers that have purchased a Zetron product during the past year likely will be able to complete the installation of SALUS in a single day, French said.
In addition, migrating to the SALUS platform promises to be relatively straightforward for many existing Zetron customers, French said.
“Let’s say you’re a MAX Dispatch customer today, under a Zetron service plan,” French said. “As part of that plan, if there is any hardware that needs to be updated, that will be upgraded to the SALUS platform. Once that happens, you have services-only access to all of the other applications we have in our portfolio.
“What that means for the customer is … if they are ready to invest in the next-generation call-taking solution, we could just simply turn that on for them to try it—it’s already integrated and working. We’ll also give our customers as much choice, in terms of how they want to consume that technology … they can choose to do it on-premise, hybrid, or in the cloud.”
While SALUS is a new platform, it was developed with the notion of remaining true to the company’s core philosophies, French said.
“No matter what we do and where invest, we want to stay true to two ideals that have made Zetron who we are today,” French said. “That’s giving our customers as much choice as possible and that we work with everyone, to support as much interoperability as we can.
“So, we’re truly driven by [standards]—whether it’s the APCO standards, the NENA standards or 3GPP standards—we will absolutely stay true to that, such that our customers can choose what is the right application, service and vendor for them.”
While SALUS is designed to support interoperable communications and customers’ vendor choice in applications, French noted that there could be advantages to 911 directors opting to simplify their centers by using more Zetron applications integrated with the SALUS platform.
“Our customers will be able to leverage the CAD of their choice, the dispatching of their choice, the call-taking of their choice, etc.,” French said. “But if they do leverage Zetron—and a vast majority of PSAPs that we’re in have two or more applications from Zetron—you’ve got it on a seamless platform.
“Think about service and software patches. It’s all remote and—for the most part—it’s going to be touchless and seamless. So, the cost of keeping your systems current and patched for all of the various vulnerabilities [is simplified]: one platform, one patch, one piece of mind.”
