In late May, Avigilon announced the company had officially acquired RedCloud Security, a Virginia-based innovative provider of access control systems. Through the acquisition, Avigilon adds a complementary product line to its end-to-end HD surveillance solution and provides the company with access to a growing segment of the global security market. Analysts estimate the global market for electronic access control will reach US$6 billion by 2015.
In late May, Avigilon announced the company had officially acquired RedCloud Security, a Virginia-based innovative provider of access control systems. Through the acquisition, Avigilon adds a complementary product line to its end-to-end HD surveillance solution and provides the company with access to a growing segment of the global security market. Analysts estimate the global market for electronic access control will reach US$6 billion by 2015.
RedCloud was founded by Terry Neely, former VP of engineering at Honeywell Access Systems, who brings 25 years of experience in databases, networking and physical access control. Neely and his team created RedCloud's access control so organizations can easily combine physical security and identity management.
Similar to Avigilon's HD surveillance solutions, RedCloud's products were engineered from the ground up. As a result, the company has experienced recent growth from selling their technology to large corporate and educational clients.
“This acquisition brings new and exciting opportunities for Avigilon to participate in a larger share of the total security market,” said Alexander Fernandes, President and CEO of Avigilon.
A few days after the dust settled, we sat down with Neely to talk about the acquisition and the history of his company.
Congratulations on RedCloud joining the Avigilon team! How have the last few days been?
Neely: It's been good! There's a lot of stuff going on. The next three to six months, we're tying everything together. It's going to be a lot of work, but long term, I think it's going to be great.
How did the concept for RedCloud come about?
Neely: Being in the industry, you could see a trend to integrate more closely with IT security including identity management and physical access control. It was natural because it follows the same type of principles identify management does. So the idea was to build an access control system that took a lot of the same ideas from IT security and applied them to the physical space – which hadn't been done before. For example, we have tools built into the product that let us work out of the box with active directory, IT logging systems and with the database systems. The standard answer is from the physical side, you get a software development kit and you have to write a bunch of software. Our approach has been we give you the tools to make it all work. You don't have to write software to make it work, it's just a question of configuring it and plug-and-play, which is really how all the IT security products work. That was the concept, just trying to make that bridge as seamless and effortless as possible.
How is your product different from what's already in the market?
Neely: Well there are three things that we do differently. The first thing is we don't make our own hardware, which kind of narrows out a big bunch of people in this space. We use off-the-shelf open hardware from Mercury or HID. Secondly, we are 100 percent browser based, so there's no thick client software. And the third thing the integration with IT that's plug-and-play right out of the box. Those three things combined make us unique.
Now that the acquisition is announced, how does it feel?
Neely: Very excited! In fact, one of the big things is being able to tie the video product and the access product together and come up with a common desktop workspace where people can move cameras and doors between both systems. To me, being able to do that plus the resources behind Avigilon and the sales team and the support, I think will just accelerate the growth that we've already been experiencing even faster.
How did the relations with Avigilon start?
Neely: We have a joint customer in the Midwest. We worked with an Avigilon integrator and he told us that we should look into working with Avigilon because their system was high performing and produced excellent image quality. So we did an integration together and that's how the whole relationship got started.
What's in the future for RedCloud?
Neely: I see it as a great opportunity to grow the business. Being able to have a large company behind us, it takes away some of the nervousness that maybe some of the larger customers might have working with small companies. That now is off the table, so it really is a product and technology play which I think is really going to make a big difference for us going forward.