As the year comes to a close, it’s certainly been a busy one for the Think Public Safety blog. Big thanks to the 13 authors that have contributed over 25 new posts this year. I hope you have found them interesting. What subjects have been popular this year? What are the most popular blog posts?

1. Top of the blogs, with a share of almost 8% of the overall views is ‘Do Clouds Have Silver Linings?’ - in this post, David Parry asks some key questions being asked around cloud. Will the cloud deliver benefits for Public Safety? Is a cloud approach more or less secure than a traditional on-premises data storage and application server approach? You may be surprised by the answer. He shares some new insight from a White Paper ‘Converting to Cloud for Control Rooms’.

2. Another cloud-focused blog comes a close second with over 6% share: ‘Cloud Control Rooms; Scalability, Flexibility, Security’ - This post is written by Mark Swift. A former Control Room Manager himself, Mark shares his experience on key issues around the transition to ESN. What is ESN exactly? How do we transition? Can we utilise more shared infrastructure? How secure is the Cloud? How can I minimise service disruption during any transition?

3. With a share of over 5.5% of views, Tunde Williams takes on the task of ‘Demystifying Intelligent Middleware’ What is it? Why is it important to TETRA? Public Safety agencies need to understand what Intelligent Middleware is to fully realise just how much they need it. Tunde also introduces our White Paper – ‘Intelligent Middleware- The Invisible Glue To Enable Truly Integrated Communications’

4. In fourth place is Julian Foster with the first of his blog series, reporting on the launch of our UK Innovation Centre, sharing perspectives from senior executives on the future of Public Safety. In ‘A Future Vision For Smarter Public Safety’, Jules reports how Eduardo Conrado, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Motorola Solutions, set the scene by defining the wider technology trends that are influencing our future vision for public safety and how these will impact officers around the World.

5. Paul Hill’s ‘Insights From A Live Hacking Demonstration’ comes a strong fifth. Paul Hill has been raising awareness about the importance of proactive cybersecurity measures for LMR systems with a live hacking demonstration. From his demos, there were some common insights he gleaned from the LMR end-users and system operators. There isn’t room for complacency when safeguarding a mission-critical, LMR system.

6. Number 6 is ‘Avoid The Nightmare Of Network Downtime’ by John Moule. John explains why you have to ‘prepare to fail’ and why a Public Safety system is not a “normal” IT network. Your technology needs to keep first responders safe and needs to be uniquely supported and managed to operate under all circumstances and events – planned or unplanned. John’s blog features the White Paper- Critical Steps To Prevent Network Downtime.

I hope you enjoyed this round-up.

Don’t forget, once you are registered for this blog community, you can comment on posts and subscribe to email alerts.

Best wishes for the holiday season!

Paul is on LinkedIn

Public Safety Editorial Lead for Europe and Africa at Motorola Solutions.

Follow @MotSolsEMEA on Twitter and look out for #ThinkPublicSafety

Join us at PMRExpo 2017, Kölnmesse, Köln, Germany, 28-30 November, stand C12

The PMRExpo Exhibition and Conference is widely recognised as being one of the biggest and most important events in the calendar for everyone involved in Professional Mobile Radio and Control Rooms. This year we are contributing to both the conference and the exhibition (stand C12.)

Be sure not to miss Christoph Thomas in the conference:

• Tuesday 28th November at 13:30 - Christoph Thomas is taking part in the Podium discussion 'PMR broadband communication – technical implementation’ (Christoph is Managing Director, Motorola Solutions Germany GmbH)

And in the exhibition? We know that data has the potential to create safer cities, thriving communities, and more efficient and effective operations. But the power of the data is unleashed when it’s converted into actionable intelligence, and is in the hands of those who need it, when they need it, so they can make the best informed decisions when and where it matters most. To do this, you need mobility. Mobile Intelligence harnesses data by unifying applications, networks, devices and services to transform critical operations and work processes.

We will be showing a set of solutions that are critical elements of our mobile intelligence framework. Here are some highlights:

• Purpose Built Devices – a comprehensive selection of TETRA handheld and mobile radios and pagers, DMR handhelds, P25 handhelds, LTE handhelds and Body Worn Devices. These are backed up with an extensive range of accessories and applications.
• High Performance Networks – featuring our new fully scalable TETRA system - DIMETRA X Core, our modular TETRA system - DIMETRA Express and our LXN 500 Ultra Portable LTE Infrastructure. This range means we can offer systems that suit every need from large future-proof TETRA networks through to the smallest backpack-portable broadband network.
• Mixed Reality Demonstrations – check out these demonstrations that show how immersive experiences enhance situation awareness. The first demonstration shows an intuitive way for a Future Fire Fighter Commander to get partly immersed in an incident in a burning building using Mixed-Reality Technology. Using virtual reality and video feeds, they can monitor the situation inside and around a burning building and make better informed decisions, faster. The second demonstration shows how a remote Future Police Incident Commander can gain instant understanding of a scene, allowing them to guide and follow a SWAT team throughout a rescue exercise. It uses wearable technology, drones, broadband and artificial intelligence together, to create a 3D holographic visualisation of the incident.
• Collaborating Seamlessly Over Borderless Networks – see how our WAVE™ interoperability platform, enables you to connect any device to any network and enable seamless workgroup collaboration.
• Next Generation Control Room Systems – experience how we support the field with more meaningful, real-time intelligence by extracting deeper insights from integrated voice, video and data; and integrate powerful real-time communications with advanced fleet control and dispatch functionalities.
• Maximise Your System And Devices Availability And Ensure Continuity – check out how our tiered levels of support help you address existing vulnerabilities, build cyber resilience, assess your risk posture, and understand how to respond and recover from intrusions.

Keep a watch out for new announcements and demos at the show too. You can find out more about these and keep up-to-date with news, videos and more during the show by visiting our dedicated event microsite – https://www.motorolasolutions.com/pmrexpo

We look forward to seeing you!

Axel Kukuk is Head of Government and Military Sales Germany at Motorola Solutions

Axel is on LinkedIn

Follow @MotSolsEMEA on Twitter and look out for #PMRExpo.

8-9 November, St. James's Park, Newcastle, UK

British APCO continues to be the forum for public safety and civil contingencies communications engagement. This year we are taking a very active part in all the BAPCO events.

We recognise that the UK public safety community faces new challenges -  doing more with less, managing technology transition and being able to turn abundant data into increased operational efficiency and better outcomes.

At B-APCO Autumn, drop by and see us at the exhibition on level 4 of the Newcastle United Conference and Banqueting area to see how we are addressing these challenges:

Managing Technology Transition - Faced with a fast evolving technology landscape, many public sector organisations are moving away from traditional capital expense based IT procurement, opting instead for more flexible, subscription-based models. An OPEX-based service approach allows you to shift the focus from buying technology to buying outcomes. See how, with our cloud-based WAVE™ Control Room Solution (WAVE CRS), you can simplify your control room’s ESN upgrade, stay-up-to-date and save money.

Doing More With Less - Budgetary pressures combined with increased public expectations are driving the emergency services to do more with less. With the right technology your organisation can meet these challenges. Using the Pronto digital policing solution, you can increase your visibility and presence in the community through improved efficiency and productivity. With the Si500 video speaker microphone, your fire and rescue service can use captured video to enhance learning, improve incident analysis and simplify evidential capture for fire investigations. See these solutions and more devices in action.

Harnessing Abundant Data - Today, we have access to more data than ever before. The challenge is to turn the abundant data into actionable insights that lead to better outcomes for the community. See how, with the CommandCentral platform, you can take advantage of a broad set of capabilities, from intelligence that uncovers deeper insights, to records and content management that streamlines data collection and digital evidence management.

Don’t miss us in the conference either - Yann Marston is speaking on 'Transform Data into Safety, Creating an intelligence layer on legacy systems’ at 13:55 on Wednesday 8 November.

We look forward to seeing you there.

You can find out more and keep up-to-date about our participation through our dedicated B-APCO event microsite www.motorolasolutions.com/bapco and more about the Emergency Services Network (ESN) here

Fergus Mayne is Head of UK & Ireland Sales at Motorola Solutions

Fergus is on LinkedIn

Follow #ThinkPublicSafety, #BAPCO2017, @MotSolsEMEA, @BAPCOEvent on Twitter.

Are you ready for the future? It has become a frequent question but it is still an important one. Even more so when you are dealing with mission critical communications.

Being prepared for whatever comes next and being ready for the unknown is really the essence of a successful mission critical organisation - be it Police, Fire and Rescue or Emergency Medical Services. Public Safety agencies need to be ready for whatever tomorrow brings. And this applies as much to their critical communications network and devices as to anything else they rely on.

We all know that the evolution to mission critical mobile broadband technology is on the horizon. For some this journey has already started. Just take a look at the ESN project in the UK and FirstNet in the USA. But we know there will challenges on this road to the future. It is not necessarily going to be a simple changeover from an LMR to an LTE network - we know that it will need to be an evolution and not a revolution.

Today most public safety organisations have an LMR network, be it TETRA or P25. These LMR networks will be around for at least another fifteen years or more - delivering mission critical voice communications. And it is conceivable that they will be around for a lot longer than that as not all organisations will fully migrate from LMR to mobile broadband. Some will run parallel voice and data networks for quite a while and some may even stick with LMR for good.

Inevitably public safety organisations will start using mobile broadband for some of their communication needs, primarily data communications. We have already seen this with police forces using commercial 3G and 4G networks for mobile data applications to improve their operational efficiency using applications like Pronto in the UK or SceneDoc in the USA. Increasingly public safety agencies are turning to MVNOs making use of commercial networks to quickly provide the coverage and capacity they need for these applications, whilst temporarily accepting the risks associated with lower resilience and cyber-security. Eventually mobile broadband networks dedicated to public safety will be deployed in some but not all places.

One thing is for sure though – there will be different network models deployed around the world – from parallel voice and data networks, and MVNOs to dedicated Public Safety LTE networks. But there are mission critical challenges yet to be met by mobile broadband technology such as Direct Mode Operation and Air-to-Ground communications as well as items like resilience, disaster recovery and security. In time technology will answer most if not all of these challenges - but this is where TETRA will have a part to play for a long time to come.

This is why we designed and built DIMETRA X Core – our new, fully scalable TETRA system - taking all the experience we have built up over the past 20 years from the 1,000 Dimetra systems we have deployed – so that mission critical networks can be ready for the future today.

Over the next few years LMR and mobile broadband networks are going to converge and operate as collaborative networks as the first step in this evolution to the mission critical mobile broadband. And this is where DIMETRA X Core comes in. With its smart interfaces and support of Intelligent Middleware and WAVE technology it has been designed to work alongside and collaborate with an LTE network.

The march to the future also brings with it other challenges such as ever increasing cyber security threats and the growing need for cross border collaboration. Designed to be on the leading edge of mission critical communications, DIMETRA X Core has the capability for an Inter System Interface (ISI) to enable cross-border communications and an advanced set of protective, cyber-security measures.

Public Safety organisations need to be more flexible with their resources to respond to the challenges presented by unpredictable and increasingly extreme situations in our fast-changing world. Which is why DIMETRA X Core’s software defined core is designed to allow customers to quickly and easily add new features and additional capacity to their mission critical communications system as circumstances change.

Dimetra X Core allows customers to not only embrace the future potential of mission critical mobile broadband but also respond to the changes the future brings as they happen - it also maximises the value derived from their existing TETRA network so they can continue being ready for the future, today.

Steen Petersen is Director - Tetra Infrastructure Customer Solutions

Steen is on LinkedIn

Follow #TETRA and @MotSolsEMEA on Twitter.

Critical Communications MENA 2017, 25-26 September 2017, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

CCMENA is now in its 5th year and this year’s event will again draw critical communications professionals from across the region.

We are a gold sponsor of the event and you will find us exhibiting on Booth B6 as well as presenting during the two-day, free-to-attend, conference.

Our focus this year is Mobilising Intelligence...

We know that data has the potential to create safer cities, thriving communities, and more efficient and effective operations. But the power of the data is unleashed when it’s converted into actionable intelligence, and is in the hands of those who need it, when they need it, so they can make the best informed decisions when and where it matters most. To do this, you need mobility. Mobile Intelligence harnesses data by unifying applications, networks, devices and services to transform critical operations and work processes.

Let me bring you up to speed with what you can expect in more detail...

Our conference speakers will be contributing to some very topical discussions:

• Monday 25 Sep. - 11am - Kiran Vaya, Director, Pre-Sales & Solutions, Broadband & Smart Public Safety, takes part in the panel discussion: 'What part can the region play in pushing the global critical communications industry forward?'
• Monday 25 Sep. - 4pm - Kiran Vaya  on 'Cybersecurity in Next Generation Public Safety Networks'
• Monday 25 Sep. - 12.05pm - Philip Bond, Account Director, on 'Gateway to the Future - How to make LMR, LTE and Broadband Technologies Interoperate'

In the exhibition, on stand B6, as well as having industry experts on-hand to answer your questions, we will be showing a set of solutions that are critical elements of our mobile intelligence framework: a set of software and services, platforms and devices that span multiple networks and enable communication interoperability, seamless information sharing and collaboration. Here are some highlights:

• Purpose Built Devices - our TETRA, MOTOTRBO™, ASTRO 25, and LTE portfolio of devices have been designed to meet the needs of mission critical communications across a variety of public safety and commercial situations and environments. We will have a selection of devices and accessories on show including TETRA radios, ASTRO 25 radios, DMR radios, LTE devices and Body Worn Cameras.
• High Performance Networks – talk to us about our range of TETRA networks including DIMETRA Express (one-box, single-site) and DIMETRA X Core – our new fully scalable system; our DMR Tier 3 compliant MOTOTRBO CAPACITY MAX System; as well as Portable LTE Infrastructure – the LXN 500 ultra portable.
• Mixed Reality Demonstration - we will show how an immersive experience enhances situation awareness with this demo of a Firefighter Commander getting partly immersed in an incident using Mixed-Reality Technology with virtual reality and video feeds.
• Seamless Collaboration over Borderless Networks - we show how you can connect any device to any network and enable seamless workgroup collaboration using our WAVE interoperability platform.
• Next Generation Control Room Systems – see how Our Control Room Systems, coupled with our CommandCentral smart public safety solutions, maximise your operational effectiveness.
• Maximising your System Availability and Equipment Uptime – see our comprehensive approach to safeguarding your critical communications.

I look forward to seeing you there.

If you can’t make it to the show or you want to keep up-to-date with our news and activity around CCMENA you can bookmark our microsite – www.motorolasolutions.com/ccmena or catch up with our YouTube Playlist

Patrick Fitting is Senior Sales Director, Middle East & Central Asia for Motorola Solutions

Patrick is on LinkedIn

Follow #TETRA #CCMENA and @MotSolsEMEA on Twitter.