a&s talks to Daniel Lee, the new MD for the Asia Pacific region at Genetec, whose mandate is to bring fresh ideas for market penetration that are both practical and deliverable in a vast region.
a&s talks to Daniel Lee, the new MD for the Asia Pacific region at
Genetec, whose mandate is to bring fresh ideas for market penetration that are both practical and deliverable in a vast region. Drawing over two decades of experience in the IT industry, particularly in relation to hardware and software distribution, Lee has a very clear sense of where Genetec’s strengths are today and has a strategic plan for bringing Genetec’s unified physical security innovations to a broader market in 2018.
a&s: How does APAC fit into Genetec’s global strategy and what can the company offer the region?
Lee: Currently, well over half the world’s population lives in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. This includes India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, China, Australia and New Zealand. Such a large, dispersed, and densely populated area naturally presents a lot of individualized opportunities for delivering security solutions to a broad range of customers.
Although Genetec, as an organization, has been in the region for the past eight years, we are increasing our investment with plans for aggressive growth in 2018. There is an incredible pool of talent at Genetec, and it makes sense to establish ourselves more fully in the area and to make our expansion into APAC part of the Genetec journey in terms of bringing technological innovation and community-building to this part of the world.
We feel now is the right time to be making this investment into APAC. Genetec is a 20-year-old Canadian company that is 100-percent independent. We have achieved a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 30 percent each year for the past five years. And, with our ongoing focus on providing unified physical security solutions to the market, we are establishing ourselves as more than a video surveillance company.
Since Genetec solutions are built on an open architecture, we can facilitate integration and support for third-party software and hardware sensor devices. We also provide application-specific solutions to a wide variety of industries, including airports, cities, enterprise and retail. In addition to providing solutions in operations, intelligence, security and the cloud, Genetec has also developed a hybrid go-to market strategy that offers the option to buy via both direct channels and through systems integrators and distributors. We understand the unique challenges that each country in APAC is facing now.
Genetec Experience Center in Montreal
a&s: How is Genetec working toward the common goal of increasing operational efficiency?
Lee: When we look at the evolution of the video surveillance market, organizations here and elsewhere around the world used to think of video as simply a means to surveil and capture evidence. This was often inaccurately interpreted as a “Big Brother” narrative. What Genetec offers is the “Big Mother” model — helping customers focus on quick responses, prevention and analytics so their businesses, cities and communities can flow unencumbered, with utmost respect to privacy.
The “Big Mother” model is about correlating data from various sources in order to help organizations and security personnel be prepared to react to any emergencies or unplanned events that may arise and mitigate damage or down time. Operational efficiency is all about getting back to normal, and protecting the everyday, so cities and communities can flow.
When an organization truly understands how goods and people move through their facility or a municipality, they can make educated improvements based on the operational intelligence a unified security network provides.
System and network security and cyber accountability
Because interconnection between organizations and governments has increased, when cybercriminals exploit a system vulnerability, the impact can be devastating.
For example, Australia is developing very strict policies on cybersecurity, and what software and hardware systems they deploy. The government has created a signal directory that defines and names vendors whose products have questionable national origin, and thus deemed untrustworthy. The latest version of
Genetec Security Center (version 5.7) comes with an auto-detection feature that will advise the end user if a camera or sensor on the network needs a firmware update. This feature insures that end users have the most up-to-date and secure firmware on their devices, removing added vulnerability to cyber-intrusion. Other industry measures are also being put in place to hold executives and organizations accountable when they are negligent to understanding cybersecurity, and fail to adequately protect their networks. The consequence of fines and criminal negligence prosecution assure greater care is taken when deploying hardware and software to a network.
Expect to see Genetec in all regions of APAC in 2018 addressing security of security, along with unified security, access control, privacy and how to benefit from correlated data analytics.
a&s: What is Genetec doing to reaffirm its commitment to customers in the region?
Lee: In 2018, we plan to invest in the APAC region by building a custom-solution center in our Singapore office – staffed with skilled engineers that address changing market demands. With centers already located in Montreal and Paris, Singapore is a strategic global location to showcase our best-of-breed solution offerings.
As a truly R&D organization, we also have longer range growth plans to add a local R&D center, potentially in India as the country has a diverse business & talent pool that will better service our end users.
Our business model in APAC
Of course, all of this is predicated on our knowledge of the region and its markets. Our go-to-market strategy in APAC is designed to address the specific, and varying, needs across each region. We work with distributors and systems integrators to ensure end users in all different verticals benefit from a custom, unified, open-architecture solution. We put great value in our relationships with the distributors in countries where English is not the primary language. But, whether we are working with systems integrators, distributors, or sales and technical support teams, our goal is to always empower our people to provide excellent service and expertise. At Genetec, thinking big and inquisitively is in our DNA. We are growing and investing in APAC; building technology with incredibly talented people. I am excited for what we have in store for 2018.