Panasonic Toughbook reseller, Advanced Mobile IT (AMIT), has replaced CheckPoint’s VPN solution with NetMotion for the South Australia Police (SAPOL).
Headquartered in Sydney, AMIT specialises in the design, manufacturing, installation and support of mobile computing equipment for vehicles.
The South Australia Police wanted a solution that allowed officers to complete their paperwork from anywhere in the field, instead of going back to the station to type statements.
“Their goal was to do away with officers carrying paper-based notebooks for recording notes and capturing statements, then having to go back to the station and type it all up,” AMIT business development manager, Nicholas Cizauskas, said.
The state's police force was using a CheckPoint VPN solution for highly mobile and mission critical-use cases that did not cater for what it needed in order to achieve full mobility.
“They had created multiple edge cases. Removing the device from the car, connecting it to the cellular network, putting it in a hardwired dock,” Cizauskas said. “When the device switched between networks, applications lost their handshake with the back end system.”
When officers lost the ability to exchange messages there was no system in place to notify field officers or communications centre staff that they lost connection.
That was when AMIT suggested NetMotion’s mobile performance management software. A trial was put in place and after testing it, the SA Police was happy to go ahead.
South Australia Police had initially estimated saving 15 minutes per officer per shift, they have later revealed that the time saved could be as much as two hours, according to AMIT.
“Thanks to NetMotion and the other products we have furnished, we are able to facilitate SAPOL’s mobility strategy. It gives their officers more presence in the field, out in the public, using the latest technology,” Cizauskas said.
Now, with a “reliable” network SAPOL could move on to deploying other applications. The full suite of services provided includes NetMotion’s Mobile Performance Management software, ruggedised and enterprise-grade tablets, Office suite and signature capture, body-worn video and other technologies.
With NetMotion’s data gathering capabilities, SAPOL has the ability to know whether a device is truly being used in a mobile manner or just sitting in an office, or if a device isn’t being turned on at all.
In June 2016, AMIT was awarded a $6.2 million contract with SAPOL for the provision of mobile rugged tablets, rugged tablets, desktop docks, vehicle docks, rugged keyboards, snap-in keyboards, chargers, AC adapters and vesa plates.
The contract had a variation increase authorised in October 2017 for an extra $1.7 million, bringing the total value of the contract to $7.9 million, which ARN understands also covers NetMotion’s software.
US-headquartered NetMotion was established in 2001 and has been present in Australia for 10 years, having recently appointed Daniel Pratt as country manager for Australia and New Zealand.
