Polycom Releases Newest Subscription-based Video Collaboration Solution for the World’s Largest Volunteer Fire Service

Polycom announced the coming role of Polycom® RealPresence One™ video collaboration solution in the operations of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service or NSW RFS last November 26, 2014.

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW FRS) is considered the world’s largest volunteer fire service, with its 87 offices, main headquarter located in Lidcombe, and more than 70 thousand members across New State Wales, which includes:

• Volunteers
• Fire fighters
• Operational staff
• Managerial staff

Being responsible for almost all of the 800,000 km emergency cases and fire incidents, NSW FRS has a huge responsibility on its plate. In the past, they communicated using solutions, which is hardware-based. And in their effort to enhance the solutions they are using and improve their services, the virtualized Polycom RealPresence One solution was adopted because of its flexibility. Together with the Polycom RealPresence® Platform, this solution helps the NSW FRS be able to decide faster, especially in times of planning for emergency. It also helps them increase their level of preparedness in terms of disaster recovery. In addition to these benefits, the solutions also brings about reductions both in travel time and cost, in the end helping the organization save money for their accommodation and allowances.

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NSW RFS Infrastructure Technology Manager Ashley Van Amstel believes that what attracted the organization in going for Polycom RealPresence One solution are its high availability, redundancy and scalability. In addition to that, she said, “Given the highly critical nature of our organization and what we do, we need to have 100 per cent uptime, 24/7. If the system goes down, people could be stranded and lives could be at risk. The virtual nature of the solution increases agility and resilience, providing us with better disaster recovery and easier backups for business continuity in the instance something was to go wrong. This provides us with the assurance that we will always have real-time visual communications between our teams, no matter what emergency situation that we face.”

Solution that Defies Cost and Distance

Capable of providing uninterrupted communication, Polycom® RealPresence One™ video collaboration solution is the best shot at life-critical situation. This solutions can also offer a seamless and real-time communication across a lot of people, and in the case of the NSW RFS, that’s 900 staff and thousands of volunteers. With the use of this, more NSW RFS members can access video solutions to communicate to one another reducing to less travel time yet better efficiency. These video capabilities can be access through:

• Mobile devices
• Tablets
• Smartphones

Polycom® RealPresence One™ video collaboration solution is capable of connecting people without any regard for the location or time.

NSW RFS Infrastructure Technology Manager Ashley Van Amstel said, “Polycom RealPresence One enables us to enjoy the full benefits of the solution on an annual subscription fee. This means we can upgrade our package based on demand, reducing total cost of ownership, which is always important for volunteer organizations like ours.”

After adopting the Polycom® RealPresence One™ video collaboration solution, the entire operations of the organization improved in several aspects. Their interaction with other emergency service organizations like NSW Fire and State Emergency Service (SES) improved seamlessly, considering they also make use of unified communication solutions. And the best of all is that the organization is able to save more time when sending out members to the field and take action, especially during emergency situations.

Besides their main operation, the NSW RFS also uses the solutions in training new members. Without needing to travel and be in a physical classroom, trainees can now receive their lessons through video training.

Polycom Australia and New Zealand Vice President Paul Newell said, “We are increasingly seeing more emergency departments utilize the power of video to defy distance, be better prepared and respond quicker during time critical situations. Virtualized solutions are highly attractive to such organizations due to the ability to provide 100 per cent uptime as well as flexibility in scale. We are pleased to see the NSW RFS utilizing the full capabilities our solutions have to offer, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with the NSW RFS in the coming years.”