During Secutech, Network Optix (Nx) Chairman and CEO Nathan Wheeler sat down with asmag.com to talk about his vision for the company and strategy to achieve even further growth down the road.
Secutech 2023, held in Taipei Apr. 26-28, attracted many overseas exhibitors. One of them was Network Optix (Nx), whose Chairman and CEO, Nathan Wheeler, sat down with asmag.com to talk about his vision for the company and strategy to achieve even further growth down the road.
Nx is certainly no stranger to Secutech, being an exhibitor in each show over the past several years. This time, it set up an eye-catching pavilion near the main entrance. The booth featured Nx as well as their various partners, showcasing latest products and solutions.
Going Gen 6
Among the many exhibits on display was Nx’s video management software, Nx Witness, which remains the company’s flagship product. The software is now in its fifth edition, referred to as Nx Witness v5, and will soon see its sixth edition.
“Nx Witness goes to Gen 6. It will lose its numerical designation. It will just be Nx Witness 6. There'll be a standard and a pro version, one of them with infinite scale, enterprise, security capacity; the other one being the product everyone knows, which will still be sold the same way. But there is a new subscription pro version that's coming, that has no limitations,” Wheeler said. “Somebody wants to roll out a 10,000-store chain. We can put every single store, every single camera on a singular system that they can manage."
Open and flexible
No matter how many generations the software has gone through, it remains true to Nx’s core vision of being open and flexible, giving customers a platform that they can build something larger on. This is especially important in today’s AIoT (AI and Internet of Things) era, where open platforms that can integrate various AI solutions to meet end user needs are in strong demand.
“Any kind of AI, any type of computer vision, any type of automation, people, vehicles, license plate… that’s all the usuals. But then anything else like directionality or dwell times … everybody’s got some cool new work flow, and it’s almost an infinite amount of intelligence,” Wheeler said. “So what we're doing to accommodate that is continuing back to our platform root, which is if you got something intelligent, we'll get you integrated, or will give you every tool you need to make it extremely integrated with our product.”
Growth and expansion
This commitment to openness and providing value to customers has won Nx continued trust and business. The company has been growing nearly 40 percent year-on-year for ten straight years. It has also been on Inc.’s 5,000 fastest growing company list for seven years.
Business has been expanding across the globe. Here in Asia, Nx has grown from a one-man show to a full-fledged force with operations in Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia, among others. Outside of Asia, Nx has presence all over the world, with offices from Portland to Moscow, from Belgrade to Montenegro.
Yet Nx employees are by no means working in silos.
“Our company runs in the same optimal way that our software runs in, which is sort of a distributed hived architecture. We’re a big distributed team but we’re all connected on little hives around the world,” Wheeler said. “And one of the things I’ve been working on over the last two years is bringing them together closer, flying them around to participate in shows. I’m doing a lot to bring our engineering team around the world closer to the business team.”
Open and RMR key
As for the future, Wheeler plans to extend the company’s winning streak. To achieve that, the CEO cites openness and a subscription model as key.
“Open, more and more open. And as we continue to put monthly cost on our sales to provide value to our customers, we have to go to a subscription model. That’s part of our strategy for next year,” Wheeler said, using a real case study to illustrate his point.
“The very first licenses I sold were 62 licenses to a jewelry store in Beverly Hills, California. He’s still on my system,” he said. “If we’re going to keep innovating and taking on cost to provide new cloud-enabled open features to our customers, then we'll need to have an annual or monthly commitment. I can't have customers that paid us nine years ago still using my cloud services nine years from now.”
Product Adopted:Software