LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill., 14 Feb. 2009. NEC Sphere Communications, a subsidiary of NEC Corp., is collaborating with Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to deliver robust, interactive unified military communications capabilities to defense, security, safety, and disaster management officials, as part of the company's service-oriented architecture (SOA) collaborative infrastructure.

The GeoViz product, a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), WebCentric GeoSpatial Collaboration tool suite, provides 2D, 3D, and 4D views of geographic areas of interest for netcentric systems capability to military, security, safety, and disaster management officials.

The GeoViz tool suite provides an SOA-based, mission-oriented framework for allowing users and/or groups of users to compose their own specific mission- (or user-) defined operational picture (MDOP or UDOP) for subsequent collaboration and mission execution. Geospatial collaboration has become one of the hottest areas for government IT organizations seeking to provide a more complete emergency response solution using this new technology, says a representative.

NEC Sphere's software is designed as a business application that fits into SOA environments. Its flexibility and openness allow solution integrators to create applications that are tailored to customers' needs. When combined with SAIC's GeoViz collaborative framework, the solution can deliver shared VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) through IP phones or soft phones, instant messaging, and on-demand conferencing to different users across multiple domains. The result is collaboration among first responders and other emergency personnel that helps to assure emergency resources are deployed efficiently.

With GeoViz and NEC Sphere integration, users at various echelons can view and annotate geospatial content of their interest while maintaining voice communication among collaborating communities of interest, describes a representative. The users achieve dynamic collaboration of geospatial data representations within a Web-centric presentation environment. The tool is fully integrated with a SOA providing visualization services in a Web browser environment with a common graphical user interface allowing simple point-and-click operations.

"Regardless of whether the enterprise is the public or private sector, collaboration is at the core of decision making," says Todd Landry, senior vice president of NEC Sphere Communications. "GeoViz customers can now securely and reliably collaborate in emergency response scenarios without having to think about dialing, radio channels, and other complexities – at a time when instant communication is imperative."

For more information contact NEC Sphere Communications online at www.necsphere.com.