09 Jun 2015    4617

60 seconds interview - Michael O’Connor, Vice President Radio Channel Sales, Motorola Solutions Inc.

Aid International Forum has conducated the 60 seconds interview with Michael O'Connor, Vice President Radio Channel Sales, Motorola Solutions Inc.

Michael O’Connor is a 22 year veteran of Motorola Solutions Inc. He has held various roles within the Radio Channel, Enterprise Channel and Carrier Channel at Motorola. His current role is Vice President Radio Channel Sales, Asia Pacific and Middle East. He is
responsible for growing and developing the radio channel business across more than 40 countries.

Recently, Mike served as the Senior Director, North America Sales and Business Operations. In this role, Mike served as the chief of staff for the SVP of Sales for the Americas. He led a 250 person team focused on enabling all levels of the sales organization. His team helped extend the reach of the sales force and facilitate incremental revenue opportunities. His team’s forecasting, pricing analysis, and competitive intelligence resulted in better solutions for our clients. His team consistently enabled Sales to save time, sell more, and identify client needs.

Prior to that, Mike was the MSSSI VP and Director of North America Distribution. He was responsible for the North America Distributor relationships for Mobile Solutions and Wireless Networking Solutions businesses. His team was responsible for driving the top line
revenue and profitability and key growth initiatives. Mike relocated his family to Singapore in July ’14 from Chicago. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN and an MBA from DePaul University, Chicago, IL.

 

Tell us about Motorola Solutions.

Motorola Solutions creates innovative, mission-critical communication solutions and services that help public safety and commercial customers build safer cities and thriving communities.

With a strong and expansive network of 7,500 partners, many of which are prepared to meet the needs and requirements of humanitarian operations, we can extend the reach and the immediacy of our critical communications support to governments and commercial enterprises in every outpost of the planet.

 

What is the latest product/service you are currently working on? What makes it stand out?

Motorola Solutions is driving the industry’s most comprehensive plan for delivering advanced communications to governments and commercial enterprises around the world. 

State-of-the-art mission critical radio combine with Public Safety Broadband 4G LTE communications to enable instant information sharing and coordinated multi-agency responses.  Command and control theatres are able to synthesize information and interpret the mass amounts of data coming from city sources, video surveillance feeds and citizen generated inputs.  Our systems integration and managed services allow governments to keep pace with the aggressive pace of technological advancements so they can focus on the mission, not the technology.

Motorola Solutions’ mission critical design philosophy led to the pioneering of a field of study that focuses on human performance in periods of extreme stress, volatility and uncertainty called High Velocity Human Factors.  We bring cognitive research and cultural ethnography into our end-to-end design process, developing solutions for emergency responders by working directly with them in crisis situations to study their communication needs under the most challenging of circumstances.

 

How big is Motorola Solutions’ involvement in humanitarian aid and disaster response today? What kind of aid can/do you provide?

Motorola Solutions has been trusted for 87 years to provide the critical communications solutions emergency response and aid teams rely upon for public safety and disaster relief operations.

The Motorola Solutions Foundation, Our donations provide vital support to emergency workers who are at the front lines of disaster relief.

When disasters strike, our solutions ensure interoperable communications across police, fire service, ambulance, and crisis management centres.  Hospitals and trauma centres receive early warning alerts and maintain assured communications with search and rescue and emergency response teams.  Gas, electric, and water departments automatically interoperate with civil defense and command operations receiving priority resources when critical to the response effort.  Integrated command operations scale instantly from local, multi-agency incident response to mass coordination across every level of government to provide a unified operational picture.  And system-wide performance and availability are monitored as an international support force may bring thousands of participants to the coordinated response and recovery.

 

What trends do you see for humanitarian aid and how does Motorola Solutions prepare for the future?

Having nurtured a steadfast relationship with the UN and related agencies over many years, Motorola Solutions is focused on responding to and managing end user requirements, driving new product opportunities and supporting channel activity with UN customers. Our experience has shown us that humanitarian aid customers share a common demand for solutions that are simple and easy to use as well as tough enough to perform reliably in rugged environments and extreme conditions.

Looking to the future, Motorola Solutions is committed to helping our humanitarian response customers implement intelligence-led strategies that manage operations, improve outcomes and save lives. “As humanitarian agencies work with an increasing amount of data from videos, photos, social media, sensors and other sources, our Smart Public Safety Solutions help harness that data to gain key intelligence and integrate it seamlessly into their operations. This helps humanitarian workers to anticipate and respond to incidents with the best information available.”

 

Tell us about the latest public-private partnership Motorola Solutions has engaged in.

Since 2011, Motorola Solutions has joined forces with the Dutch Foreign Ministry, Philips Qualcomm and others to create such programs as theSolutions for Hope tantalum  and the Conflict Free Tin Initiative (CFTI)  to test the feasibility of responsible, traceable sourcing of minerals and to promote economic stability in fragile, post-conflict areas. The benefits of proactive development-oriented intervention in supply chains promote transparency, responsible sourcing, and local community development.

 

Do you have any comment to add?

Developing the humanitarian vertical can complement and enhance your existing business. It offers immense potential and has the added benefit of helping to make the world a better place simply by doing what you do best.

I encourage all of you to take a proactive approach in nurturing the opportunities that exist in the humanitarian sector and spreading growth and prosperity for all.