Motorola Solutions inks deal to buy Airbus DS Communications

Motorola Solutions today announced plans to bolster its 911 portfolio and next-generation 911 plans by purchasing the North American assets of Airbus DS Communications—notably, its industry-leading VESTA platform—in a deal that is expected to close by the end of the year.

Bruce Brda, Motorola Solutions’ executive vice president of products and solutions, said the acquisition of Airbus DS Communications—part of Plant Holdings, Inc., which legally is the purchase target in the definitive agreement—is the latest in a series of moves that are designed to position Motorola Solutions well in the 911 marketplace immediately and especially as the industry transitions to all-IP next-generation 911 platforms.

“I believe that we’ve built—by far—the industry’s most complete software portfolio, with Airbus and Emergency CallWorks in the call-taking space, with PremierOne and Spillman in the CAD and records [arena], with our console portfolio,” Brda said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “And, if you wrap an analytics wrapper around it, the PublicEngines acquisition we made in 2015 gives us a really good foundation to build a public-safety suite in software that I believe is second to none in the industry.

“The Airbus VESTA acquisition really gives us the high-tier 911 call-taking solution that was missing from that suite that I just described.”

Although Motorola Solutions bought Emergency CallWorks and its call-taking solution two years ago, Brda said that solution does not overlap the 911 market segments served by Airbus DS Communications and its VESTA platform.

“Emergency CallWorks, which we acquired in 2015, really started their entry into the market in the Tier 3 PSAP space,” Brda said. “With the acquisition by Motorola, they’ve grown from Tier 3 and into the bottom of Tier 2 PSAPs.

“Airbus is really very complementary, because they’re Tier 1 and at the top of Tier 2. So, between the two of those assets, we have a really nice fit for everything from Tier 1 PSAPs down to Tier 3, with Airbus at the top and Emergency CallWorks at the bottom.”

Airbus DS Communications CEO Jeff Robertson echoed this sentiment.

“I think what ultimately brought this together was the vision in the end of allowing Motorola to expand into more of the 911 business and expand some of the feature set in their command-and-control solution,” Robertson said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It’s a nice fit, sort of like Microsoft Office—all of the pieces come together. I’m excited to see how we can bring those products together and have Motorola expand into the 911 industry.”

When the Airbus DS Communications deal is complete, Brda said he anticipates that transitioning existing Airbus DS Communications customers to Motorola Solutions should not be a significant problem.

“The customers that have previously bought the Airbus products or solutions are largely the same public-safety customers that we have today, so we think this will be a very smooth transition as the assets that they have bought from Airbus historically move under the Motorola umbrella,” he said. “We call on the vast majority of them today, so this should be very smooth.”