The acquisition of TDSi by French group Vitaprotech promises to benefit both companies now and in the long-term future.
Mergers and acquisitions are changing the security industry. Last year, TDSi became one of those companies — it was acquired by France-based Vitaprotech Group, who specializes in perimeter intrusion detection (PIDS) and access control.
“TDSi has been acquired because we have a different route to market than the other companies that they've acquired,” explained John Davies, CEO of TDSi. “We go through distribution as well as direct to systems integrators (SI). Also, we do a lot of business in North Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. The rest of the group companies don't do any business there, so there are some good synergies.”
How acquisitions benefit the acquired
Nowadays, to be able to compete with major players like
Hikvision Digital Technology and
Dahua Technology you need size and scale. The industry has seen private equity companies come in and acquire security companies in order to build something that can compete against these top manufacturers.
“I think there are still some people that are product sector champions and leaders, but customers these days are not interested in a product. They want a solution,” Davies said. “By themselves, these companies are small players; they’re probably not going to survive unless they specialize on their niche. If you specialize on the niche, you’re not going grow to become a really big company. So it depends on what the strategy is,” Davies said.
For TDSi, its acquisition by Vitaprotech is part of the group’s ongoing strategy — its new GUARDiS product range is of particular interest to its new parent company. In Intersec 2020, with the support of the Group, TDSi just launched a new GARDiS product.
The acquisition, however, brings about the prospect of accelerating that development. “It is not an acquisition that is done to save money, it’s an acquisition that has been done to create value and introduce new products into different businesses, into the businesses that they acquire,” Davies explained.
The company is also looking at how it can become the logistics and technical support in the U.K. for some of the perimeter intrusion detection businesses owned by Vitaprotech. “We’re looking for those synergies where the group companies can help each other boost business. That will be the first thing,” Davies said.
Growing the business
Outside of Europe, the company has a presence in several countries in Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, China and Hong Kong. For example, in Thailand it has an exclusive arrangement with Panasonic, and also works with Panasonic in Malaysia. In China, their business is mostly project based.
Davies added that TDSi has started to work with a software company in India. “They’re going to be taking our products to their portfolio to sell to their customers. But it’s early days. That is something we can look at,” he said.
In terms of integration, TDSi has been doing integration with video since 2004 and continues to integrate with more companies. It also integrates access control products from companies like
Assa Abloy and
SimonsVoss. Currently, they are in talks with Hikvision to integrate its access control as a service.