"We ensure that the connection never fails!"
Interview with Dr. Joachim Kalcher, Managing Director of Scotty Group Austria GmbH
From series streaming at home and video conferences in the office, almost everyone is now accustomed to perfect image and sound quality with seamless connectivity. Yet those are fair-weather environments, which one wouldn't dare dream of in military, fire, and rescue operations: Nevertheless, a reliable and secure connection for central as well as decentralized coordination of the forces is essential here. The Austrian company Scotty Group has specialized as a strong product house in high-quality solutions for relevant application fields. Managing Director Dr. Joachim Kalcher spoke in an interview with Wirtschaftsforum about current innovations and the biggest challenges.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Dr. Kalcher, true to your guiding principle 'secure, reliable, trusted', the Scotty Group clearly focuses on communication solutions in safety-critical environments – what specific challenges do you have to face in this context?
Dr. Joachim Kalcher: We typically cater to authorities and authority-related organizations such as emergency services and fire departments, but we also supply to military environments. In all these application areas, there are naturally particularly high demands on the respective equipment: A communication system in a helicopter, for example, is subject to high vibrations and rapidly changing temperature ranges, and moreover, the maneuvers the helicopter performs are rather unfavorable for the position of the antennas – thus, the device itself causes a shadow in radio transmission, and the rotors literally chop up the transmission signal. However, this problem exists not only in the air – even on the ground, radio coverage in built-up areas is often not the best, as anyone can notice when passing through an underpass while talking on a mobile phone; it usually does not go well for long. In safety-critical environments, however, the connection must never fail. Therefore, we need appropriate protocols that intervene in these cases to ensure continued stable data transmission.
Wirtschaftsforum: How exactly do you ensure that?
Dr. Joachim Kalcher: By using a good mix of a variety of selected components that the market has to offer, which we then enrich with our own hardware and software. For example, in video compression we use our own codec, which can handle high latency times in satellite communications without problems, as well as the issue that the data does not always arrive completely at the other end. For hardware, we often use mesh components, so that the position becomes antenna-independent and we can better cover the surrounding structure.
Wirtschaftsforum: What technological innovations are you currently working on?
Dr. Joachim Kalcher: We are currently pursuing numerous possibilities to ensure that all emergency personnel have the same picture of the current situation at the applicative level – this is ultimately not only vital for their personal safety but also for their efficient intervention. Among other things, we are working on the integration of visualizations of data streams from various sources – in the context of firefighting, this could, for example, involve exhaust values or smoke gas analyses, which can thus always be monitored at a basic level. If desired, biometric data can also be included in the system with the consent of the respective individuals, so that other emergency personnel can intervene immediately if, for example, a colleague is showing signs of smoke gas poisoning. To ensure even greater resilience of our systems, we are now relying on an architecture without central components, where the individual nodes take on the coordinating roles – if one fails, another can step in immediately.
Wirtschaftsforum: Along with reliability, security also plays an essential role in any communication solution.
Dr. Joachim Kalcher: We fundamentally work with European solutions, which have no connection to interests from third-party states. The communication tools we provide to our clients are thus entirely in their hands and are completely independent of all third parties. We are happy to develop the individual configuration together with our clients. Especially in the governmental context, there are naturally strict legal requirements regarding individual components and encryption systems. If we are unable to implement something on our own as an established product house, we like to work together with strong implementation partners.
Wirtschaftsforum: What impulses would you like to set for the future?
Dr. Joachim Kalcher: We are convinced that information is the essential basis for action – during deployment and beyond. We want to continue to dedicate our full attention to this mission and grow steadily over the next few years: in Europe, but also in Asia and Africa, where interesting markets are emerging for us. Technological requirements will continue to increase – not only because of the much more complex cybersecurity landscape but also in terms of user expectations, who are used to a completely seamless communication experience from video conferences to streaming, coming from their private environments – a fair-weather setting in technical terms. At the same time, we want to prove every day anew, as an Austrian provider, that technological innovations not only come from overseas but also arise in the heart of Europe.