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www.officer.com March 2015 Law Enforcement Technology 41 offer affordable pricing. Consider what you have in-house: Your servers, connectivity, firewalls, switches, backup products, storage, etc. Now consider the cloud: Multiple firewalls, multiple switches, multiple redundant environments, multiple internet connections, scalable stor- age and so on. W hat does that mean for you? That means for every one server you have, putting that in a cloud hosted environment means there are three or four doing the same thing. As opposed to the one firewall you have, a cloud host has at least two or three. The same goes for switches and other hardware. And the storage is infinitely scalable. That means not having to buy more of anything when you get hit with a mandate like body cameras and need more storage. Cloud technology is proving phe- nomenally more efficient and more available than your in-house operation might ever be. If that wasn't the case, it wouldn't have survived so successfully for this long. The average costs of hosting what you have in-house balances out after a few years, which is just in time to replace your hardware again anyway. But your savings aren't just in remov- ing your hardware; it's in the efficiency you gain by having a hosted solution available 100 percent of the time to 10 percent of your staff, regardless of their location—even if you lost your headquarters due to evacuation, emergency or disaster. All you need is an internet connection and you're back online. What to look for When looking for a cloud pro- vider consider these factors: • First and foremost, are they CJIS compliant? They either are or they aren't. • Second, think support. Does the provider know your tech- nology and are they willing and able to work with your Circle 36 on Reader Service Card third party vendors such as CAD/ RMS companies to accomplish a smooth transition? Can they provide you with round-the-clock support? • Has the company not only been able to meet CJIS compliance, but are they committed to the IACP Guiding Principles on Cloud Computing? • Does the company know law enforce- ment? Not from an "I have a friend" perspective, but actually know it. This is important because law enforcement isn't like any other industry. It needs very special considerations and under- standing. Providers who have actual "road experience" combined with their technical knowledge are far more ben- eficial for an agency than just knowing the technical side. It's time to seriously consider cloud hosted solutions to help shoulder the load of information and data. Law enforcement should not be in the IT or hardware business, and going cloud could just be the answer for your agency. ■ Michael Coppola is the president & C.S.O. of CJIS Solutions, a provider of CJIS compliant hosted solutions for law enforcement. He's also the Chief of Police for the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department in New Jersey and has an extensive background in law enforcement and information technology. In government, law enforcement especially, most things we do are because we have to, not because we want to. We were one of the last industries to stop using a typewriter! Businesses and corporations on the other hand are far ahead of us.