RapidDeploy drives innovation in public safety with cloud-native mapping and analytics using Azure for US Government and Power BI

With a name like RapidDeploy, you might expect it to be an organization that cares about speed. That’s because as a public safety company, RapidDeploy knows fast response times can literally mean the difference between life and death. 

Founded by two South African first responders, RapidDeploy develops emergency communication technology for public safety answer points (PSAPs)—also known as 911 call centers. Its innovative, cloud-native technology provides two-way communication, real-time analytics, precision location mapping, and first responder applications to PSAPs at the local, state, and federal levels. 

RapidDeploy started its US operations at a time when public emergency response infrastructure was almost entirely on-premises and public safety officials believed cloud-based systems were incapable of meeting their requirements for security, reliability, and uptime. RapidDeploy knew the reasoning behind this skepticism, but it was confident its solution could provide telecommunicators and first responders with crucial, life-saving data that had never before been available.  

Building a secure and scalable platform

RapidDeploy co-founders Steven Raucher and Brett Meyerowitz decided the best approach would be to tackle this resistance systematically. They knew if RapidDeploy could offer a secure and scalable cloud platform, it would be able to satisfy its American public safety customers, so they directed the company's engineers and architects to build the platform on Azure for US Government and Microsoft Power BI. RapidDeploy worked closely with its Microsoft team to develop a cloud-native solution with microservices and a highly resilient infrastructure. 

RapidDeploy vice president of partnerships and strategy Todd Komanetsky credits RapidDeploy’s connection with Azure for US Government as a factor in earning the trust of the company’s first US customers. “Public safety was concerned with storing sensitive caller information in a commercial cloud, but Azure for US Government has the certifications to operate with very sensitive information,” he says. “When we were trying to make inroads with our first customers, we could point to Microsoft as our partner to ensure customer confidence.” 

Microsoft technology strategist Sean Graine explains that while his team helped RapidDeploy define and build highly resilient solutions, the partnership actually helped both companies make better technology. “RapidDeploy has been a tremendous partner because it’s interested in getting the technology right,” Graine says. “We wanted to show what’s possible to public safety customers who didn’t believe the cloud was ready for critical workloads, and we accomplished that.” 

Keeping sensitive data secure

The issue of customer trust is never more important than in relation to compliance, data security, and privacy. The public safety industry handles people’s data in their most vulnerable moments, so data sovereignty and security are paramount. Thus, the industry has extremely high standards for solution providers. 

For RapidDeploy, security breaches or other incidents would impact the crucial task of responding to 911 calls, not to mention damage the customer trust it had worked so hard to build. “Azure controls where data lives and who can access it, but that doesn’t stop bad actors,” says Komanetsky. “That’s why relying on Microsoft’s overall security has been so critical for us.” 

Delivering analytics that make a difference

In addition to the telecommunications side of RapidDeploy’s business, it also offers an analytics tool to help public safety officials make data-driven decisions regarding efficient 911 call center operations. Built on Power BI, Eclipse Analytics helps shift public safety officials from a reporting mentality to an analytics mentality, which is changing how they run their centers. 

RapidDeploy vice president of marketing Marni Burger explains that without the cloud, PSAPs face a daunting data management task. “When 911 centers don’t leverage the cloud, they often have to manually collate several data sources, even PDFs in some cases, before passing them along to officials at the state level. It’s a labor-intensive and cumbersome process,” Burger says.   

RapidDeploy’s analytics capabilities using Power BI make easy work of tracking operational metrics, which can help agencies secure grant money and other forms of funding. The ability to create on-demand reports with drill-down capability for call volume, call processing times, and staffing levels also helps illustrate how agencies are being run and provides insight into the overall efficiency of 911 networks and their ability to deliver service requests successfully. 

Sharing success in a context of collaboration

Komanetsky observes that in every market—and with every customer—there are first movers and last movers. The difference in public safety he notes is that no matter who’s first or last, everyone collaborates. “In competitive business situations, nobody wants to reveal their innovations, but the world of public safety isn’t competitive,” Komanetsky says. “The leaders in public safety want to serve the public good. That means best practices spread quickly, and peers can see new ideas like cloud-based emergency response in a new light. In our case, once customers understood we had a scalable, referenceable solution built with Azure for US Government, they turned to their colleagues to gain confidence and understand the real value we were providing for public safety.”   

RapidDeploy’s experience with Microsoft also shows that collaborative spirit can be an important part of public-private partnerships. Customer confidence in the cloud and cybersecure solutions has improved. RapidDeploy has increased its US market share while transforming how the emergency response sector thinks about technology. Innovation that potential customers in 2019 said wasn’t needed has become a prerequisite, and competitors are rushing to expand their own cloud capabilities, as many agencies have even begun issuing RFPs that make working in the cloud a requirement. 

“RapidDeploy is an award-winning Microsoft partner, sharing its best practices and expertise as a pioneer in bringing secure, high-availability cloud solutions to the public safety industry. We’re proud to partner with RapidDeploy on creating technology that’s transforming emergency response to help save lives,” says Microsoft vice president of mission systems Bill Chappell. 

Now that RapidDeploy has demonstrated what emergency response centers can do with cloud-based solutions, it’s working with Microsoft and its other partners to push improvements even more. The company remains committed to high availability targets but also wants to deliver data that helps first responders do their jobs faster and with more situational awareness. 

“We’ve only been in the US for three years,” Burger says. “Now more than 25 percent of the telecommunicators in the US population use RapidDeploy. Give us three more years. What will public safety look like then? It’s an exciting time.”