The cloud-based security solutions provider Eagle Eye Networks has acquired Panasonic Cloud Management Services Europe, which owned the Cameramanager and Nubo.
The cloud-based security solutions provider
Eagle Eye Networks has acquired Panasonic Cloud Management Services Europe, which owned the Cameramanager and Nubo. Combined with the latter, Eagle Eye is now world’s first global cloud video surveillance company.
In an exclusive interview with asmag.com, Dean Drako, CEO of Eagle Eye Networks, explained the vision behind the company’s decision to enter into the deal at this time.
“Eagle Eye has been very successful in the North American market,” Drako said. “I am pretty confident that we are the largest cloud video surveillance company in North America. We also started very early in our work in Asia, with a strong team there. So we have been doing very well in parts of Asia - Japan, Australia, Singapore [and] Hong Kong as well. But I had so much executive bandwidth and so we have not put a whole lot of effort into the European market.”
He added that the company began its move into the European market about a year ago, and although were getting some good traction in the U.K., was not happy with the results in the continent. Drako has known the Panasonic Cloud Management Services team for quite a while and as he began considering the European market more seriously, a deal with the Japanese company seemed appropriate.
Asked why Panasonic would consider such a deal, Drako said that the company had come to a realization that open systems were the future as opposed to proprietary systems.
“If you look at the history of the IT world, which Panasonic is very familiar with, open systems like Ethernet and Linux have generally won and closed systems have generally staled in the market place in the long run,” he said. “The system that Panasonic (Cloud Management Services) was proposing was kind of closed, really only for Panasonic cameras, and they did not really have a good way to support a broad spectrum of cameras, because they were Panasonic. Whereas the Eagle Eye systems is open with thousands and thousands of cameras with every manufacturer. The Cameramanager team really wanted to be part of that winning solution. Panasonic would be able to provide a better product for their customers and better support and their customers will be happier.”
And the customers who had been briefed about this deal prior to the public announcement seemed happier indeed, according to Drako, who said that they have been extremely enthusiastic. They really liked the idea of the additional technical capabilities that Eagle Eye brought in and the fact that they would now be working with the largest provider of cloud-based surveillance solutions provider in the world.
Of course, acquisitions are not new to Drako, who has been part of several before. But for Eagle Eye, this is the first experience. But it may not have much difficulty integrating the newly acquired division to its fold as it has retained all of the staff that came with it.