Infotech Lead America: Targeting enterprises, Cisco has launched multivendor, interoperable communications capabilities — IPICS 4.6 communication solution — for operations and dispatch centers.
Besides government customers, Cisco is targeting businesses in sectors such as transportation, utilities, manufacturing, healthcare, public safety and education with the new solution.
Cisco claims that its IP Interoperability and Collaboration System (IPICS) solution includes support radio interfaces for interoperability, encryption key management, and customizable interfaces for field dispatchers.
Many public safety organizations have vendor specific proprietary systems and use donor radios to interface to other systems.
A number of other organizations face communications challenges across existing radio systems and require flexibility to incorporate other mobile devices such as smart phones.
Cisco — in a statement said — IPICS 4.6 communication solution supports Inter RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI), Console Sub-System Interface (CSSI) and TIA P25 Digital Fixed Station Interface (DFSI) standards.
Cisco provides full support and implementation of TIA102-BACA and TIA102-BAHA standards and allows for arbitration of CSSI, DFSI and encryption.
By utilizing Cisco Video Surveillance (VSM) Manager 7, available for IPICS 4.6, dispatchers can drag and drop video surveillance cameras directly into incident communications channel providing voice, video, and data collaboration directly to the field personnel.
Dispatchers can now tear away parts of their graphical user interface moving their dispatching environment to multiple screens and folders for improved usability.
Cisco says enterprises can save 40 percent in network and infrastructure costs when applications become consolidated and virtualized.
Shipments will be ready in Q2 of 2013.
Thomas Burkett, senior product line manager, Harris Public Safety and Professional Communications, said: “Harris has tested the P25 ISSI interface in a Virtual Lab environment. We are now moving to live customer deployments using the ISSI interface.”
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Dan O’Malley, senior product manager, Cisco, said: “With our new release we are giving our customers choice in dispatch clients and we are excited because these open standards will drive down system costs similar to what SIP standards did for VoIP telephony.”
