Motorola Solutions unveils VESTA Hybrid, a 911 offering that packages cloud-based services for public-safety answering points (PSAPs) that want such functionality while continuing to leverage traditional on-premises (on-prem) solutions
By Donny Jackson, Editor
Motorola Solutions has unveiled VESTA Hybrid, a 911 offering that packages cloud-based services like VESTA NXT, Assist AI, advanced Radius Mapping and cyber-resilience capabilities for public-safety answering points (PSAPs) that want such functionality while continue to leverage traditional on-premises (on-prem) solutions.
Motorola Solutions’ senior vice president for Command Center and Cloud Solutions, Todd Piett said the company is starting to “get some really solid traction” with PSAPs from its cloud-based 911 service offerings, but many 911 centers do not want to make the leap to a cloud-only platform at this time. With the VESTA Hybrid bundle, PSAPs can use both traditional on-prem technology and the cloud-based services, so they can make whatever migration decisions when they want, based on technological, operational and financial factors.
“We see a significant number of [public-safety 911 entities] that … aren’t ready to make that move [to a cloud-only architecture],” Piett said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “But they see the value in remote call-handling for things like non-emergency [calls], and they definitely see the disaster-recovery needs, and there is a slew of other use cases that they’re interested in supporting.”
“This allows call centers to [have] the typical VESTA 911 call-handing. They’ll have Radius Mapping. They’ll have all of our AI features. And they’ll have the ability to just login remotely to the cloud offering. In the event that something happens on-prem—for instance, in the case of a disaster—or they just want to have surge capacity or want to have admin calls handled by people at home, that’s all enabled through the web UI [user interface] in VESTA NXT [the cloud-native, software-as-a-service, call-handling offering].”
PSAPs that already use VESTA 911 call-handling and Radius Mapping from RapidDeploy—a company that Motorola Solutions acquired in February—can upgrade to the VESTA Hybrid package without the need for any new hardware, according to Piett.
“It’s all cloud-enabled,” he said. “So, we’ll handle the network components on the back end. Just plug it in, and we’ll give you the credentials.”
Piett said VESTA Hybrid is available to any PSAP beginning today, but Motorola Solutions initially will target the offering to existing customers of the VESTA 911 on-prem solution, which accounts for a significant share of the 911 marketplace today.
Utah Communications Authority Executive Director Tina Mathieu outlined some of the positive operational outcomes of implementing many of the key components of the VESTA Hybrid package.
“Across Utah, we’ve seen the power of Motorola Solutions’ NG911 technologies in reducing misrouted 911 calls and accelerating our emergency response times,” Mathieu said in a prepared statement. said. “Our call handlers will soon be able to transcribe and translate calls using Assist, send callers a link to livestream videos or share photos with 911 and use the feature set of Radius Mapping to receive more precise caller location data.
“These technologies give our PSAPs the ability to respond to calls faster and with better intelligence, so important details don’t get lost while the caller is in crisis.”
In addition, the VESTA Hybrid includes cybersecurity monitoring and alerting services powered by ActiveEye technology that Motorola Solutions acquired several years ago.
“It basically deploys some components in your infrastructure, and it monitors against attacks,” Piett said. “It also provides real-time reports.”
Such cybersecurity capabilities are increasingly important to 911 centers in today’s interconnected environment, Piett said.
“Traditionally, these PSAPs were served with a copper line and were islands to themselves,” Piett said. “But as we’re networking all of this stuff together, the easiest place [for a hacker] to come in is through a small PSAP that doesn’t have a dedicated IT team and hasn’t updated its Microsoft versions in two years.
“That’s where [ActiveEye] really comes in handy. You can bring best-in-class practices down to even the smallest PSAP. They say, ‘Here are some things you need to do. If you want us to help, we’re happy to. But recognize that you’re being hacked by this method every day, and here are some vulnerabilities you need to be aware of.’”
