Airbus DS Communications, NICE announce technology integration, expanded strategic partnership

Airbus DS Communications and NICE recently announced that the companies are completing integration tests of their 911 solutions—both in the laboratory and in the field—that confirm compatibility in a next-generation 911 environment that supports multimedia communications.

During the testing, the Airbus DS Communications VESTA call-handling platform and the NICE Inform digital-evidence solution have been demonstrated to work in a fully integrated fashion in the lab and at seven Brazos Valley Council of Governments (BVCOG) sites in Texas.

“Airbus is the leader in call-handling in the U.S.—they have 3,500 PSAPs across the U.S.—and NICE is a leader when it comes to digital incident-information management, and we have more than 3,000 across the globe,” Diamond Chaflawee, NICE’s director of business development for public safety, said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Coming together, we can bring a solution that has a lot of value to the customer.

“That gives our joint customer a number of things. One, it is a certified solution, so they have the confidence that it is reliable, it is tested and so on. Another thing is that it’s a future-proof solution—both the Airbus VESTA and the NICE Inform solution that are integrated together are compliant with the next-gen 911 standards, so they are ready for the future.”

Andre Williams, director of portfolio management at Airbus DS Communications, echoed this sentiment.

“We are excited,” Williams said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We believe this is the right partnership for the way we see things moving toward the future and helping our PSAP customers be ready for handling that.”

Chaflawee said the joint audio-recording and screen-recording solutions have completed all testing and are commercially available. Testing of the text-handling functions at BVCOG are scheduled to be completed at the end of June, and that solution should be commercially available after test assessments are completed. Both Williams and Chaflawee said the BVCOG tests have proceeded well, with resolutions to real-world glitches being developed quickly after issues have been identified.