TEMECULA, CA—Cassidian Communications, an EADS North America company, together with channel partner Carousel Industries, has successfully upgraded the 9-1-1 call handling equipment at the Norfolk, Va., Emergency Call Center (ECC) with the Sentinel® Patriot® 9-1-1 call processing solution and the Aurora® management information system (MIS). The emergency call center now has around-the-clock direct and secure protection with a comprehensive suite of Managed Services, ensuring the integrity and reliability of its solutions.
“Our previous 9-1-1 equipment was more than ten years old. As repair costs continued to increase and replacement parts became scarce, it became clear that our call center needed a more technically robust solution able to provide additional efficiencies for our call takers and dispatchers,” said Anthony Castillo, manager, Norfolk ECC. “Our primary goal is to ensure all calls for emergency service are quickly answered and dispatched to the appropriate first responding agency. Upgrading our call handling equipment to one that can exceed our expectations and is NG9-1-1 ready was the appropriate route for our agency to take.”
A Cassidian Communications customer since 1997, the Norfolk ECC is equipped with 10 call taking positions along with seven Sentinel® Patriot® CommandPOST™ workstations that are utilized as training positions in the Emergency Operations Center. The Sentinel Patriot CommandPOST workstations can be deployed to the field for remote call taking in a disaster or to assist in situational awareness, as needed. In 2011, the call center handled over 680,000 emergency calls for service from the highly dense population. According to the 2010 Census, Norfolk is the second most populous city in Virginia and is home to more than 242,800 citizens within a mere 53.7 square miles of land.
“Upgrading legacy call handling solutions to one with NG9-1-1 capabilities and having seven Sentinel Patriot CommandPOST workstations provides the Norfolk ECC additional redundancy and back-up capabilities should the area be hit with a natural disaster,” said Mike Pavick, vice president, sales, Cassidian Communications. “It’s an honor for us to have our equipment used at such a refined and innovative agency.”
The Sentinel Patriot solution’s IP architecture, designed expressly for NG9-1-1 applications, allows for the sophisticated design of backup, disaster recovery and overflow operations with the assured ability to provide reliable service under unexpected conditions. The geo-diverse deployment model provides maximum system survivability, and the efficient network architecture design minimizes data traffic and bandwidth usage for ongoing cost savings.
The Norfolk ECC also upgraded to the Aurora® MIS solution, a tool that enhances the user’s ability to gather, organize, data-mine and report on call center metrics, increasing efficiencies in staffing and information management.
Cassidian Communications continues to serve clients ranging from public safety operations to Fortune 1000 corporations to federal agencies. Collectively, the company has more than 40 years of experience deploying 9-1-1 call processing solutions, notification solutions and first responder digital trunked radio networks.
About Carousel Industries (www.carouselindustries.com)
Carousel Industries designs, delivers, and supports the technology solutions that become the foundation of our clients’ businesses. Our unified communications, virtualization, Voice over IP (VoIP), visual communications and collaboration and data infrastructure solutions leverage our consultative approach, deep technical expertise, and extensive industry partnerships.
About Cassidian Communications (www.CassidianCommunications.com)
As the largest and most trusted source of mission critical communications solutions, Cassidian Communications, an EADS North America company, is leading the way in standards-based NG9-1-1 call center applications, notification solutions and services, and P25 land mobile radio systems.
About EADS North America (www.eadsnorthamerica.com)
EADS North America is the U.S.-based operation of EADS, a global leader in aerospace, defense, and related services. EADS contributes more than $12 billion to the U.S. economy annually and supports over 220,000 American jobs through its network of suppliers. EADS North America, headquartered in Herndon, Va., offers a broad array of advanced solutions to meet U.S. military and commercial requirements, including fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, homeland security systems, public safety communications, defense electronics and avionics, and threat detection systems.