Scyron builds solutions for Microsoft’s Citizen Safety Architecture to help Governments improve public safety

Thursday 23 April 2009

Scyron CEO at Microsoft Worldwide Public Safety Symposium in Redmond

Scyron, the security and surveillance services company, announced today that it supports Microsoft's Citizen Safety Architecture. Citizen Safety Architecture is a suite of software solutions that provides law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and emergency services with a platform to combine, view, correlate and share intelligence data from multiple sources. The ability to visualise and correlate data from a variety of sources will prove critical in improving public security and safety.  For example, intelligence services will be able to quickly update and  process all manner of information on suspected threats, whether it be written reports, audio, photographs or video evidence and share this information with others.

Scyron’s technologies - that focus on intelligent video surveillance and the management and presentation of multimedia evidence - will comply with the new standard and therefore slot seamlessly into systems being built. According to IMS Research, the growing market for intelligent networked video surveillance is estimated to be worth $1.7 billion worldwide by 2012*.



Pictured from left to right:  Graham McLaughlin, Derbyshire Constabulary & Michael Wilks, CEO, Scyron speak at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Safety Symposium

As one of  the partners announced at Microsoft's Worldwide Public Safety Symposium in Seattle, Scyron will use the Citizen Safety Architecture as a core foundation for its intelligent surveillance and digital evidence management systems and software developed at its Research and Development Laboratory in Birmingham, UK. This builds on the agreement between the two companies in November 2008, which saw Scyron become a global Microsoft Go To Market Partner for Public Safety and National Security.

“In the present economic climate with increasing crime levels as well as threats to public safety in all parts of the world, Microsoft's Citizen Safety Architecture is providing an important framework with improved IT connectivity and software applications such as ours. This facilitates a rapid response to combat these threats," said Michael Wilks, chief executive officer, Scyron. "Also, it is encouraging to see Scyron demonstrating IT innovation with organisations, such as Derbyshire Constabulary, that are leading the way in the use of body-worn video to support the judicial process and better protect citizens."

Microsoft’s Citizen Safety Architecture aims to bring together Scyron’s DARC intelligent surveillance and DEMON digital evidence management with Microsoft's collaborative software tools, including Microsoft Single View Platform, Microsoft FusionX and Microsoft Intelligence Framework. The result is a suite of software with enhanced IT systems and connectivity for greater collaboration. It will help law enforcement organisations analyse and manage the proliferation of video and digital material gathered from  CCTV to mobile phone footage.

Andrew Hawkins, Director, Public Safety Solutions, Worldwide Public Sector  at Microsoft, added, "More than 300 representatives from the public safety and security industry attended Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Safety Symposium.  By combining CCTV, analysis and evidence,  Scyron has created a powerful solution for Microsoft’s Citizen Safety Architecture that provides rapid intelligence that can be shared across international borders, helping to improve public safety.”

Notes To Editors
*IMS Research – The World Market for Video Content Analysis – 2008 edition
Photography is available of Michael Wilks, chief executive officer of Scyron speaking at the Microsoft Worldwide Public Safety Symposium with Graham McLaughlin, chief inspector, Derbyshire Constabulary.

Microsoft's Citizen Safety Architecture is a set of innovative software solutions and services to help governments proactively plan for and effectively respond to public safety threats and natural disasters:

• Microsoft Single View Platform (SVP). SVP helps governments by providing them with a single view of information and data, enabling users to turn situational awareness into action. The platform can be agency- or program-defined, depending on the program requirements and the kind of information needed by the user or agency. Microsoft SVP is an open, industry standards-based technology that provides a highly integrated foundation for data visualization solutions in the area of business intelligence, information sharing, workflow and business processes, project management, and network systems. SVP partners include Advantage Factory Inc., GreenLine Systems, IDV Solutions, Information Strategies Inc., Infusion Development, I.S. Consulting (ISC), The Mariner Group LLC, MicroLink LLC, Planet Technologies, Projility and Twisted Pair Solutions Inc.

• Microsoft FusionX. Built to support fusion centers, Microsoft FusionX takes data from disparate sources across federal, state, local and tribal governments, in addition to the private sector, and fuses it into one complete picture to enhance awareness, planning, prevention and incident response. Microsoft, in partnership with the Illinois State Police and other law enforcement agencies, has designed a technology platform and architecture for the sharing of law enforcement intelligence that fills a critical void and could make the world a safer place.

                          
Microsoft Intelligence Framework. The Microsoft Intelligence Framework (IF) helps local, national and international law enforcement and intelligence-related organizations share information and work together to provide a coordinated approach to preventing and detecting acts of terrorism, and solving organized and major crime cases. The IF is the result of a five-year collaborative partnership between Microsoft, its partners and law enforcement agencies from around the world that faced a common threat from cybercrime. The framework gives investigators the tools for all-source analysis, which means they can store, search and analyze a broad spectrum of potentially related investigative information.

About Scyron
Scyron is a security and surveillance services company focussed on helping public and private sector companies with its world-leading intelligent surveillance solutions. Headquartered at the Longbridge Innovation Centre, Birmingham, Scyron is a privately-owned company. The company has created a new category of security solution – ‘intelligent, incident-based security and surveillance.. This is based on a global patent for an incident-analysis algorithm which is the core of solutions and services for customers in the UK and overseas from:  48 police services including West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Humberside Police Services; London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham; US FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

The company’s security and surveillance solutions and services span: the detection of suspicious incidents; to presentation of information – as well as evidence in courts. This provides fast, targeted and effective evidence on which to take action as well as provide a deterrent.