Building on its vision of information as a weapon, Microsoft is laboring to reduce the costs of fusion center situational analysis. The Redmond company indicated that the FusionX Appliance, developed together with ESRI, was designed as a streamlined and affordable solution to catalyze the evolution of Homeland Security Operations. Addressed to state and local data fusion centers, as well as to emergency operations centers, the FusionX Appliance is essentially a bundle between the collaborative and geospatial products and technologies, from both Microsoft and ESRI.

“Our police forces, sheriff departments and fusion center managers are increasingly relying on collaboration tools that help them connect the dots in a world of asymmetrical threats,” explained Gail Thomas-Flynn, general manager of State and Local Government at Microsoft.

“Microsoft and ESRI’s FusionX Appliance provides the layman- to expert-level technology that can facilitate the intake, analysis, visualization and dissemination of information to the right person, at the right time, in the right place.”

The FusionX Appliance will be delivered to customers with a joint solution, combining ESRI’s ArcGIS Server Advanced Enterprise with Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server 2007. Via the product, analysis of data in correlation with mapping information will be enhanced, with collaboration and real-time sharing capabilities.

In addition to Office SharePoint Server 2007 and ArcGIS Server Advanced Enterprise, the FusionX Appliance also delivers Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server 2008. At the same time, Microsoft and ESRI ensure that via the FusionX Appliance terabytes of mapping content and imagery are made available to the customer.

“We understand what it takes to provide secure and mission-critical capabilitie,s in ways that leverage the technologies that many customers already own,” said Russ Johnson, Public Safety industry manager at ESRI. “And that is extremely important in this economic climate.”