As CEO of i2, Bob Griffin reminded his audience at the recent i2 EMEA User Conference held in Brussels, of what has changed at i2 during the past 12 months.
The biggest change and the catalyst for all that has followed since, was the merger of i2, one of the leading providers of intelligence and investigation management software for military, national security, public safety and commercial organisations, and Knowledge Computing Corporation (KCC), providers of COPLINK, which enables tactical lead generation for law enforcement organisations.
-It enabled us to merge the digital sensor and data acquisition, analysis and digitalisation capabilities of i2 products such as Analyst’s Notebook with the complex human sensor data capture capabilities inherent in the most widely deployed lead generation tool in the U.S., COPLINK. And in doing so, we have been much better placed to help government and other agencies defeat illegal activities of all kinds.
Following the merger, Griffin, previously founder and CEO of KCC, was appointed CEO of i2 and immediately announced that the new larger company would place an even greater focus on innovation.
The integrated Intelligence-Led Operations Platform, for example, brought together key elements of the company’s existing solutions set to proactively ‘deter, prevent, predict and disrupt the world’s most sophisticated criminal and terrorist threats’ and other enhancements, including improved visualisation, spatial modeling and navigation, biometrics and open source, significantly enhancing the user experience.
-Like all our developments, these were based directly on listening to our customers and acting on what they told us. Users in both the public and private sector confirmed, for example, that in improving their intelligence and response capability their need was typically for a massively scalable enterprise environment, advanced server-side computing capabilities and operational flexibility and deployment. At the same time, collaboration needed to be at the heart of any intelligence platform and, at a user level, the interface had to ‘support the way you work’.
Having reviewed the substantial changes to-date, Griffin then confirmed that -2010 was looking even better. In seeking to revolutionise the provision of intelligence support, the company’s mantra, he said, was clear: -to develop transformational technologies to accelerate your mission.
Griffin did not underestimate the task facing law enforcement at all levels. -Criminals and terrorists are constantly adapting and finding new ways to subvert the safeguards that protect our society. This means we need to stay constantly one step ahead by finding ways to take action before a critical event occurs.
-This is not just about connecting the dots’ it’s about connecting the right dots and understanding what they mean. And when confronted by an ever-increasing amount of data from all angles, our task is to help our customers make sense of the information blizzard.
In response, Griffin announced a new initiative, due for launch in the fourth quarter of 2010, -representing the most powerful step we’ve taken towards realising true intelligence-led operations the next generation of intelligence technologies on an enterprise platform.
In equipping its software with end-to-end enterprise capability, i2 has combined the DNA of its existing product portfolio, including Analyst’s Notebook, iBase and COPLINK, to bring together investigative analytical, operational and command level staff under one highly secure, open and scalable platform for the first time.
The result of this is that i2 users, from the police officer on the street to the senior commander and from the analyst to the front-line soldier, will be able to more easily and effectively utilise technology to prevent criminal and terrorist activity.
How will this be achieved? All personnel within a given organisation will have access to an environment that allows for seamless interaction with information in real time. It also enables teams to better configure intelligence data to support all phases of an investigation and connects them to a wider community by searching across third-party, public and proprietary data stores.
The enhanced Intelligence-Led Operations Platform incorporates a number of key characteristics. Full enterprise-class capability includes a web front-end, field-level security and high scalability. In addition, it incorporates deployment capabilities supporting both tethered and untethered environments, as operatives out in the field cannot always be connected to the organisation.
The ability to access and exploit increasingly important open source data is enhanced with improved search, spider, seek and alerting capabilities. To be truly effective, access to such advanced functionality must be intuitive and here the easy-to-use web face is personalised based on profile, permissions and preferences, with advanced visualisation to aid multi-dimensional analysis.
On such examples is the partnership with World-Check, which enables the preloading of i2 Analyst’s Notebook and iBase with World-check’s extensive database of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and heightened risk individuals and organisations.
This is mission critical for i2 customers. In the view of William J Bratton, former Los Angeles Chief of Police and New York City Police Commissioner, -what i2’s technology means for these organisations couldn’t be more crucial: stronger analysis, better information and quicker decision-making to unearth connections and take action to prevent crime and terrorism.
Looking back at the day of the merger as the starting point of this crucial initiative, Griffin believed: -15 July 2009 was an excellent day for i2 and the forces of law and order – and a bad day for terrorists and criminals.
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