SOMA Global is bringing agency partnership and technology innovation to public safety

Technology is a must in every field and public safety is no exception. Crime rates can come down to some extent and safety is improved with the help of new technology in software.

SOMA Global is a provider of modern public safety solutions. They redefine how dispatchers, first responders and other public safety personnel work – increasing productivity, reducing errors, and saving lives.

The company not only has extensive public safety experience, but also a team that has built other modern, scalable, and highly configurable applications for multiple industries. SOMA has applied this knowledge and experience to deliver the most robust and flexible cloud-native public safety platform ever built.

Joshua Lewis, CTO, will walk us through the journey of SOMA Global

Q. How have you helped law enforcement, fire departments, and other public safety agencies?

SOMA is a partner to its agencies in delivering modernized technology solutions to better serve and protect their people and the communities which they serve. To streamline critical-response communications and protect first responders, advances in technology must be embraced.

This industry is filled with outdated and costly software. These legacy systems are typically a client-server installation with a severely lacking user experience that costs users time and is prone to errors and the need to repeat tasks.

Our proprietary PSAAS™ (public safety as a service) framework adds significant value to our partners by bringing their mission-critical technology functions to the cloud, this includes but isn’t limited to computer-aided dispatch, mobile dispatch, records management, jail solutions, and our highly  configurable analytic-based dashboard. SOMA is not just about technology modernization but also well-informed rationalization. It’s about driving change, creative thinking, and being unafraid to challenge the status quo with a collaborative and long-standing partnership with our agencies.

Q. How does SOMA Global deliver mission-critical applications to first responder agencies in a safe and secure way?

SOMA is armed with a deep set of cloud security tools consisting of more than 200 security, compliance, and governance services and key features. It also utilizes a serverless infrastructure within the cloud that enables SOMA to focus on the security of application code and the storage and accessibility of sensitive data.

Q. How do you help your customers serve their communities best?

The SOMA Global Platform is deployed in the cloud with an intuitive user experience that is highly configurable and device-agnostic. Our intelligent applications streamline how dispatchers, first responders, law enforcement, and other public safety personnel work, increasing productivity with streamlined data interoperability – ultimately saving more lives and increasing transparency and productivity.

Q. How is SOMA Hub a perfect data-sharing platform?

SOMA Hub features an innovative cloud-native core to connect agencies and their data for instant interoperability. It’s a highly configurable analytic-based records dashboard that agencies can leverage to provide real-time visibility across their organization. Agencies can use the SOMA Hub to create group-level dashboards to ensure data is in clear sight of the right eyes every time.

Q. How does SOMA Safe help in case of emergencies?

SOMA Safe is a smartwatch device integration to improve first responder safety. SOMA Safe directly connects with first responders leveraging GPS-enabled smartwatchfunctionality to directly connect with their location in real-time, particularly in emergencies.

There is nothing more important in public safety than law enforcement and first responder safety.

Many public safety agencies are limited in their technology to have real-time location access to their personnel in the field, with SOMA Safe, this limitation is minimized. When an officer or responder is separated from their vehicle, typically there is no way to track their location when it’s needed most.

All first responders need to have a rapid ability to locate an officer or firefighter and communicate with them in situations when their in-car or radio communication access is limited. With SOMA Safe, in-field personnel have the ability, with a single click on their smartwatch, to activate immediate communication with dispatchers and fellow first responders.

As technology continues to transform, public safety technology must evolve to take advantage of the best tools to ensure officer and first responder safety.

Q. Do you have any products in line for future launch?

SOMA Global has realized that implementations in the public safety domain have been a pain point for agencies looking to be more selective in their software choices - these processes are challenging, complicated, require massive investments, and take up a lot of time. We’ve also noticed that agencies want the ability to define their own workflows and processes instead of shoehorning themselves into the limitations of the software they’ve purchased. To those ends, we’ve made huge investments and strides in the low-code and no-code configuration space - bringing the lessons learned in the private sector from companies like Salesforce or Shopify to the experienced hands of public safety professionals.

Q. How is SOMA Global different from other public safety technology companies?

We thrive as a partner, versus a vendor, to our agency partners. We become an extension of our agencies building deep relationships alongside rapid evolutions of critical technology, and we do so with live support response times in under 5 minutes and while applying agile methodology approaches.

When becoming a partner with SOMA you can be confident that we are working right beside you, progressing with you and your technology needs for not only today’s mission-critical needs but tomorrow’s as well.

Meet the leading light

Joshua Lewis, our CTO, has been with the company for four years. He was our first engineering hire and has personally taken part in nearly every go-live and implementationthe company has gone through. He came to SOMA Global from Tesla - leading data engineering and software development teams for their Model S/X and Model 3/Y production lines. Joshua has been a project manager, an actuary, a robotics engineer, and holds a degree in Applied Mathematics.