Oregon State Police Selects Locality To Enhance Mission-Critical Mobile Computing Deployment

OSP Honored by Mobile Enterprise Mobilizer Awards '12 for Increasing Field Officer Efficiency

Seattle, WA -(Marketwire) - NetMotion Wireless, provider of software to secure, manage and optimize an organization's mobile deployments, today announced Oregon State Police (OSP) has purchased Locality cellular network performance management software to enhance the quality, reliability and value of its statewide mobile computing deployment. Locality provides OSP with a faster, more precise way to troubleshoot cellular network connectivity issues to improve officer safety, increase field worker productivity, extend investments in technology and service contracts, and reduce IT help desk tickets. Using Locality to evaluate real-world connection performance, OSP was able to define and meet new coverage requirements.

Last week, Mobile Enterprise magazine named OSP an honorable mention in the Enterprise Wide Mobility category for the Mobilizer Awards '12. Judges recognized OSP's success deploying NetMotion Wireless' Locality and Mobility XE mobile VPN in combination with other powerful technologies to improve the efficiency of field officers. OSP was also a finalist in the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) 2012 Recognition Awards and received a gold honor in the State Technology Innovator Awards.

"Before Locality, we did our best to troubleshoot issues by asking officers to describe their symptoms," said Albert Gauthier, CIO, Oregon State Police. "Without any cold, hard data, though, we struggled to know exactly what change was necessary. Locality bridges this gap by giving us real empirical data for bandwidths, real time access to connectivity data, device inventory information and more."

OSP provides critical public safety services to its citizens and public safety partners across the state. Field employees and officers are regularly working from their vehicles and moving from one location to another throughout the day. Needing to access critical data by connecting to central information systems and databases from the road, officers routinely use public cellular networks to make the connection. To better serve its communities, OSP wanted to easily troubleshoot and eliminate any preventable connection issues its employees faced working remotely.

Using Locality, the OSP IT team was able to identify and quickly address dropped connection and packet issues field officers frequently encountered in eastern Oregon. "Locality confirmed very quickly that we had areas of low bandwidth performance near Bend," added Gauthier. "Once we were able to document this issue repeatedly -- using multiple officers traversing the region -- we wanted to include our operator in the conversation."

With a Locality coverage report in hand, Gauthier sat down with the agency's carrier representative to discuss the possibility of improving coverage in the area. Already taking steps to enhance service in this region, the carrier confirmed it had plans to install three new cell sites.

Locality is the only cellular counterpart to a wired network performance management offering, providing the detailed device, network and application reporting organizations need to proactively identify coverage issues, troubleshoot help desk tickets, make performance-based buying decisions, effectively track and manage all deployed devices, and more.

"Field officers should not worry about a call taking them to an area of poor coverage," added Gauthier. "Locality is invaluable for helping us defend against these instances and at the same time enhancing officer safety. Avoiding problems in the first place and/or being able to quickly pinpoint if an issue sits at the application, network and device level, has significantly reduced officer downtime and our support load levels."

With Locality, organizations can evaluate -- for the first time -- how well their mobile data deployments are working. IT staff can methodically compare and select carriers based on real performance data from their field users and choose the computing devices and data networking cards that provide the highest productivity. Organizations can also reduce wireless deployment expenditures by identifying under-utilized or unused mobile assets. 

About NetMotion Wireless
NetMotion Wireless develops software to manage, secure and optimize wireless data deployments for organizations with mobile field workers. The company's products address the unique challenges introduced by the use of wireless. Mobility XE, the market's most deployed mobile VPN, increases mobile worker productivity by keeping them connected as they move in and out of wireless coverage and roam between networks. And Locality, the first and only cellular network performance management software, provides the detailed device, network and application information organizations need to maximize their wireless investments. More than 2,000 of the world's most respected enterprise, government, utility, healthcare, public safety, insurance and other organizations rely on NetMotion Wireless to improve their mobile productivity. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.netmotionwireless.com

NetMotion and NetMotion Mobility are registered trademarks of NetMotion Wireless, Inc. Mobility XE and Locality are trademarks of NetMotion Wireless, Inc. All other trade names, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.