By Adan Pope, Chief Technology Officer, Intrado

If the words “cloud computing” make you feel a little bit like Charlie Brown, with a dark and stormy rain cloud trailing you around, you’re not alone.

Maybe you’re worried about what implementing cloud-based communication technologies at your emergency communications center (ECC) will mean: Will you be able to rely on it? What happens if it goes down and there’s no backroom equipment your IT department can fix to get you back online? How much will moving to the cloud cost?

First, let’s define what we mean by the “cloud.” At its simplest, the cloud refers to data centers that are run by other people or their companies. This includes big players like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft’s Azure, Google Cloud and others.

From Netflix to NASA, the cloud is everywhere. Virtually every industry you can think of – from retail, banking and travel to government, education and healthcare – has adopted this off-premise approach to data management.

So what, exactly, does the cloud mean for public safety?

Moving ECC technologies from the “iron box” in the backroom to an offsite organization you already know and trust can increase your uptime, reliability and redundancy. In fact, one of the biggest reasons so many diverse industries have embraced the cloud is its reliability. Many cloud providers commonly claim you can rely on them 99.9% of the time.

Intrado uses these providers as well, because for some of our solutions it makes the most sense. In other cases, we provide our own cloud storage solutions, with reliability standards that are even higher. We operate at what we call “five 9s” of reliability: 99.999%. That means we have multiple instances of our most critical applications running at all times to ensure availability, and that we don’t miss a beat.  This level of concern for reliability is required by public safety as the safety of the public is a primary concern.

The global trend that’s driving the move to the cloud means that eventually anything that can be usefully connected to the internet will be. While so far that has mostly meant fixed locations like our businesses and homes, this is quickly expanding to include connections we make while we’re in motion. In our cars. On a plane. Your smartphone can tell you how many steps you took today and your car probably knows your average speed, tire pressure and fuel utilization rate. Linking information where it’s valuable and potentially lifesaving is a primary focus of the work we do at Intrado. Your local fire service may not care what your tire pressure is, but in the future, data delivered from your car to the cloud could tell firefighters what type of fuel your car uses, and that could make all the difference in quickly and safely managing a vehicle fire.

A Gentle Transition

1. You purchase only the technology you need, when you need it. For the foreseeable future, centers will predominately follow a hybrid approach. They will use on-premise equipment along with some integration of cloud technology and gradually make the migration according to each center’s timetable. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, so you can customize the features that make sense for your ECC, staff and community.
2. You can scale your workforce up or down as needed. Let’s say a seaside community’s population swells in the summer months and drops to a fraction of that number after Labor Day. Telecommunicators can be up and running – in an ECC or remotely – almost instantly during peak months using a VIPER® laptop that accesses the cloud.
3. You’re likely to save money. With less equipment, office space and other overhead required, and a more distributed workforce, the cost savings are clear.
4. It’s easier to get help. In the event of a large-scale disaster or other event, the cloud makes it simpler and faster to bring in backup from a neighboring jurisdiction, or even another state, when you really need it. You can more readily provide that support to your colleagues, too.
5. You’ll be ready for the vast influx of data. Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT) – meaning physical objects like alarms, smart speakers, wearable devices and connected appliances with sensors that communicate data over the internet – ECCs and public safety in general will soon have access to tremendous amounts of information and analytics that can be seamlessly uploaded to the cloud and accessed as needed. Over time, this information can help public safety leaders, call takers, dispatchers and first responders alike make better decisions that shorten response times, more efficiently deploy limited resources, and save money and lives. Even better, the data can be made available to a small, rural community as easily as a big metropolitan area.
6. Upgrades will be faster and easier. Most current ECC equipment and software are dated, and refreshes take effort, time and money. As a result, an upgrade may happen only every five to 10 years, making wide adoption of new capabilities hard to achieve. The cloud will allow ECCs to always have the latest tools available at their fingertips, enabling them to optimize both efficiency and effectiveness.

It’s normal to wonder (and worry) about any big change, especially when lives are on the line. But rest assured that when it comes to moving ECC operations to the cloud, Intrado’s priorities are the same as they have been over our 40+ years in public safety. Our goals – resilience, reliability, availability – aren’t just a promise to our customers, they are our mission.

Join Adan Pope, Chief Technology Officer at Intrado; Dominick Nutter, Emergency Communications Director for Raleigh, North Carolina; and Lev Deich, Vice President, Product Strategy, Intrado, on Tuesday, June 29, 2021, for “Cloud-Based Call-Handling in Public Safety Answering Points: Is the Market Ready?”, part of Intrado’s “911 Live” event. Register here.

Intrado is an innovative, cloud-based, global technology partner to clients around the world. Intrado Life & Safety connects people and organizations at the right time and in the right ways to the nearest emergency assistance, providing thousands of public safety agencies and first responders with critical data points to coordinate the best emergency response. Our end-to-end, NG9-1-1-compliant solutions help organizations keep their users of both traditional and emerging technologies safe. For more information, please call 1-877-862-3775, email safety@intrado.com or visit www.intrado.com/life-safety.