Under the deal, Israel-based Nice Systems will provide its Nice Inform technology to support Houston's 9-1-1 Center, which manages emergency communications and other multimedia incident information.

Houston consolidated its three communications centers into a single answering point in 2003. With the Nice Inform and other Nice communications technologies, officials say the consolidated departments will be able to share a single, partitioned and redundant solution for recording and reviewing emergency communications.

"The Nice solutions are the next step in our evolution as a technologically advanced emergency communications center," Matt Hyde, Houston Emergency Center chief technology officer, said in a statement.

"Nice offered us advanced capabilities and greater reliability, ease of use and scalability than we had before. With Nice Inform, we're also laying the foundation to be able to extend our recording capability beyond voice to include data and video too."