ACRE has recently announced its purchase of Ireland-based TDS. The move is expected to boost ACRE’s geographic presence as well as its offerings of cloud solutions, which have gained traction across the security industry.
ACRE has recently announced its purchase of Ireland-based
Time Data Security (TDS), a provider of cloud-based visitor management solutions. The move is expected to boost ACRE’s geographic presence as well as its offerings of cloud solutions, which have gained traction across the security industry.
This was ACRE’s first acquisition after being
acquired by Triton. ACRE has said it will continue to invest and expand. Joseph Grillo, ACRE CEO, stated after the Triton deal: “As we reach our next stage of growth and strive to hit new milestones, we are pleased to welcome Triton as the partner to help us expand our presence and capabilities organically and via new acquisitions. This partnership will allow us to continue to invest in innovation and bring our market-leading solutions to customers.”
Their latest acquisition target is TDS. The Ireland-headquartered company provides smart workplace products including visitor management, life safety and access control software solutions, with 25 million users worldwide and projects at over 3,000 sites. Among their clients are Goldman Sachs, UK Parliament and Accenture.
The company’s CEO Frank Hart and Director/Board Member Sean Murphy will remain at their current positions, an ACRE press release announcing the deal said.
Stronger global reach
The deal is mutually beneficial for both companies. For TDS, it gives them better access to US market as well as ACRE’s strong financial backing. As TDS puts it in its
blogpost: “This new partnership with ACRE will provide TDS with a stronger global reach in the security solution industry, in the North American market. Along with accelerating TDS' growth plans, ACRE will support our aim to become one of the foremost leading providers of smart workplace solutions for enterprise business across the world.”
For ACRE, the deal is beneficial as well. Especially, it aligns with their expansion effort, both geographically and product-wise. “This purchase will enhance ACRE’s strategic expansion plans for strengthening the product portfolio and geography in the UK and Europe and bringing new cloud-based visitor management and access control products to North America,” the ACRE PR said.
TDS offers cloud-based visitor management solution that can be self-service operated via kiosks, tablets or from reception. They also offer standalone kiosks that allow visitors and contractors to check in, capture photos and print badges. Their VMS compliments existing ACRE portfolio including the Vanderbilt, RS2 and Open Options brands.
This can add a cloud-based VMS component to the offerings of ACRE, which already has a presence in cloud-based access control. An example is ACT365, a cloud-based access control and video management solution offered by Vanderbilt Industries.
Cloud gaining traction
Cloud has definitely gained traction across various sectors. Most businesses nowadays have migrated significant portions of operations to the cloud.
TechJury, for example, points out 85 percent of businesses worldwide are already making use of cloud technology to store information, while 94 percent of the Internet workload will be processed in the cloud by 2021.
Security, meanwhile, has also adapted to this trend. Video surveillance-as-a-service is an example, whereby video can be viewed and managed remotely without the user having to install expensive equipment. According to
Eagle Eye Network, the video surveillance-as-a-service (VSaaS) market has reached US$1.8 billion by 2020 and is expected to grow at an 18 percent CAGR through 2024.
Visitor management has increasingly become a digitized operation, replacing the traditional pen and paper method that is prone to illegibility and fraud. Now visitor management seems to be moving to the cloud as well, for the same benefits as VSaaS and other cloud-based applications: remote management capabilities, scalability and operating from an OPEX, monthly subscription model. For end user entities with multiple sites and offices, cloud-based visitor management systems can be especially beneficial as no expensive hardware equipment is needed at each side.
How the ACRE-TDS deal will eventually play out remains to be seen. ACRE has already committed to further investments and expansions. Given the popularity of cloud, we can expect ACRE to make more related acquisitions and purchases.