Seattle – NetMotion Wireless, a leading provider of mobile productivity and management software, today announced that Hays, Kan. has deployed NetMotion’s mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN) on laptops used by police officers. NetMotion’s software, Mobility XE™, boosts mobile productivity by maintaining and optimizing secure connections to applications as officers move in and out of wireless coverage areas and across various networks.
Serving nearly 20,000 residents, Hays is the largest city in Northwest Kansas. The IT department used funds from the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Grant, part of the U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, to purchase mobile VPN licenses. After an initial deployment of Mobility XE completed by its sales and set up partner Portable Computer Systems, the city is installing the software on more and more of its police officers’ laptops. In addition, some software licenses have been allocated to Ellis County for testing and evaluation for possible county-wide deployment of the mobile VPN.
“This will allow our officers in Hays to do in their cars what they normally had to do in our law enforcement center, therefore allowing them to spend more time on the streets, interacting with residents and serving the community,” said Chad Ruder, IT coordinator, City of Hays, Kan. “The mobile VPN will also allow them to have real time access to their records management system to look up critical information from the field.”
With secure and seamless wireless connection ensured by Mobility XE, the officers can e-mail, write reports, access records management and other sensitive information from the department’s network drive, all from their police cruisers, no matter where they are in the city.
“It is imperative that the City of Hays’ police officers have secure access to critical information from anywhere in the field,” said Pam Cory, vice president of marketing, NetMotion Wireless. “Our mobile VPN increases productivity, giving law enforcement personnel more reliable data and application connections, even between networks and outside wireless coverage areas.”
The City of Hays’ police force joins a number of government agencies across the country that rely on Mobility XE to mitigate some of the most common challenges in mobile deployments today, including end-to-end security, application stability, and seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and wide-area cellular networks. Additionally, NetMotion optimizes wireless performance and automatically connects users to the fastest available network.
Mobility XE also empowers IT administrators with a system-wide view of device activity, including application use, device connections, bandwidth consumption, wireless network status, battery life and much more. With Mobility XE, administrators can customize policies to better manage application and network access, quarantine lost or stolen devices, and prioritize bandwidth for critical transmissions and applications.
In addition to the Hays, Kan. police force, more than 60 percent of the nation’s largest public safety organizations, those with more than 500 sworn officers, now use NetMotion’s software to maintain secure and stable wireless data communications for their mobile field deployments.
About Hays, Kan.
Hays is the largest city in Northwest Kansas at the crossroads of Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 183. The city, which has approximately 20,000 residents, was incorporated in 1885.
About NetMotion Wireless
Based in Seattle, NetMotion Wireless develops software to enable businesses and agencies to maintain and optimize connections to applications as their mobile workers move in and out of wireless coverage areas and across various networks. NetMotion’s award-winning mobile VPN, Mobility XE, enhances mobile worker productivity at more than 1,600 of the world’s most respected organizations across multiple industries including utilities, healthcare, communications, public safety, local government, transportation and many others. For more information about NetMotion Wireless or its products, please visit www.netmotionwireless.com or call (206) 691-5500.