Microsoft, Motorola Match Skills for Emergency Services Software

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) will tap Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) platform to enhance its emergency services software applications, the company announced today.

The Microsoft-Motorola alliance will provide marketing and development support to deliver a rapid incident management solution for law enforcement, first responder and criminal justice customers.

Motorola said it would build the applications on Microsoft's .NET Framework and Windows Server System to enable first responders to handle incident information quickly and accurately record, store and retrieve department records.

Timothy Boyle, vice president of Business Development at Motorola, said mission-critical environments demand unparalleled reliability and continuous data access. The Microsoft platform, he said, allows Motorola to meet and even exceed those demands.

Immediate Fruit

"Choosing the Microsoft platform will allow us to quickly and seamlessly deliver Web services that can power the mission-critical systems of justice, public safety and public service organizations," Boyle said. "Agencies of all sizes need to be able to quickly, securely and affordably deploy solutions that will enable critical data-sharing across disparate computing and communication environments."

Motorola's current NetRMS Records Management System and Motorola Computer Aided Dispatch Software will immediately leverage this agreement.

Motorola will develop justice, public safety and public service applications using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server System software, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server and Web services built on the .NET Framework.

A Joint Effort

Microsoft and Motorola will focus on developing technologies for enhanced communications between all levels of government, providing a unified architectural approach to integration and information-sharing that meets the security and interoperability requirements of comprehensive government information systems of all sizes, types and standards.

The alliance also includes plans to further refine and enhance current versions of Motorola's justice, public safety and public service software applications for the Microsoft platform -- solutions in broad use by government agencies today.

"Motorola and Microsoft have been working increasingly together on a series of fronts," Enderle Group principal analyst Rob Enderle told TechNewsWorld. "This is just one more step to show and allow Motorola to differentiate in an area that they dominate in the United States, which is communications for police and emergency healthcare."

Unified Software Solutions

Motorola said development of these unified software solutions on the Microsoft platform will eliminate the need for expensive ad-hoc information-sharing networks, enabling improved decision-making through timely delivery of reliable data to the right people in real time.

"Microsoft recognizes and takes seriously the growing challenge to law enforcement, first responders and emergency management officials to communicate vital information in real time," said Tom Richey, executive director of Homeland Security for the Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft.

"Our alliance with Motorola, a leader in mission-critical wireless communication solutions, reflects our joint commitment to providing the technology tools to help meet today's public safety challenges and work with our public sector customers to move to the next generation of software and information-sharing tools."

Going With the Flow

As Enderle noted, Microsoft and Motorola already have a strong relationship in other areas. For example, Motorola's cell phones use Microsoft's Windows Mobile. But the relationship is not exclusive. Motorola announced it would expand its use of Linux in July.

"Motorola will do whatever it takes to maintain its dominant position and if that means doing stuff on Linux it means doing stuff Linux. If that means doing stuff on Microsoft then they'll do stuff on Microsoft," Enderle said. "They are not religious. They'll do what their customers want them to do because the don't want to give up this very lucrative market to anyone else."