Eastside Business News at EastsideBusiness.com

Motorola and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance, Motorola Software to Be Optimized for the Microsoft Platform

Full Line of Motorola Applications for Law Enforcement, First Responders and Criminal Justice to be Built on Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Windows Server System

Microsoft Corp. and Motorola Inc. recently announced an alliance to provide marketing and development support to deliver next-generation software applications to law enforcement, first responder and criminal justice customers. Motorola will offer mission-critical software applications built on the Microsoft platform, including the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Windows Server System.

These integrated applications are designed to provide a complete rapid, seamless incident management solution that enables first responders to quickly and efficiently handle incident information and accurately record, store and retrieve department records. Motorola's current NetRMS Records Management System and Motorola Computer Aided Dispatch Software will immediately take advantage of 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.

"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."

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

These applications are aimed at increasing the quality of information available to first responders, increasing the effectiveness of incident management and making it easier for agencies to better manage resources for enhanced citizen safety at lower costs, automating the mission-critical functions for a single- or multi-agency and multi-jurisdictional public safety agency.

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 -- market-leading solutions in broad use by government agencies today.

Motorola's 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. This will result in the ability to integrate data with key partners (federal, state and local) while increasing information availability and operational simplicity to help reduce errors.