As promised here is my round up of IFSEC 2014 in June, if you were unable to get there.
The show was the usual massive size that we have become to expect, with Tyco Security Products taking centre stage like Cinderella’s palace in the middle of the main hall. In fact I think they were probably the only stand which had the two floors. Mind you Anixter did take a huge stand at the back of the hall that didn’t seem to have any kit on it or people come to that, however they did serve the best coffee? When I say they had no people, well that was other than the Wednesday afternoon when they hired a rock group that drove everyone to their stand, infact I understand they ran out of beer twice!
Other big stands were of course Axis Communications, Samsung, Canon, Risco, Assa Abloy, Dahua, HIKvision, to name a few, Some companies, the likes of Xtralis had two large stands, one in IFSEC and one in FIREX. Milestone had their usual group of companies on their stand and there were other attractions such as the CCTV Direct double-decker bus,. That’s a mouthful just to say, and different from the tank of last year. And then there were the Volkswagen vans which on the floor plan at some point had said the AD Group? And the Smart car on the Y3K stand with Smart witness installed in it, which I still think Paul Singh should have raffled off! Maybe he still will?! But did you see that giant cowboy on the Innovise stand? He gave me a stiff neck when I stopped to talk to him; he was even taller than David Westwood from Pro-Vision and let me tell you that’s tall! I have to say a number of people commented to me that they liked the Samsung stand, its white mannequins showed the visitor what they do quite clearly, and I was thinking they had started a new line in mannequins. Well, they do make everything including planes! IFSEC tell us that some 46,000 visitors attended the shows this year and that they have sold 87 per cent of the floor space for next year already! So did it work in London? Of course it did, as I have said before, it will work wherever you put it.
The gossip of the show? At the opening of the show you will know that Milestone announced that they had been acquired by Canon; in fact it was the Friday before the show, which of course meant that Canon and Milestone also had a very busy show,. Canon are set to take the market by storm so I would suggest you keep your eye on them. Who will be next I wonder? Also big news from the show was that Y3K have done a deal with Senate Electrical, (owned by Rexcel) now that means that the company will be selling its full range of CCTV and access control systems through Senates branches. That’s 104 of them, so yes there is one near you for sure, more about that next month. But it has to be said that this deal will substantially increase their coverage across the UK. Paul stressed to me on a number of occasions that he had not sold to Senate even though they had asked him many times.
What stood out for me? Seems 4K is the new talking point as I predicted to my guys before the show. What is 4K? Ludwig Bergschneider from Grundig told me it was 4x HD so I suppose that makes HD 1K. OK, don’t write in and put me straight, I am trying to talk in layman’s terms, but Avigilon have quadrupled that already by producing a 16 megpixel camera which has a widget in it so that it does not deliver all 16MB until you zoom into the live or recorded picture, thus saving on storage and bandwidth. I was also shown a cyber-crime stand that had broken into other networks around the show. Wonder why your cameras were moving? well, that’s why! Naughty boys, but making a point that you need to secure your network as that could be a real James Bond breaking into your system and moving the cameras away from the scenes they are supposed to be protecting.
The other subject that kept coming up was ‘open platform’; everyone says they are now open to anyone and everyone, so does that mean Onvif are no longer needed, I wonder. As I pointed out to all of those that talked about the issue, they have to get people to believe it truly means open. There are a load of pictures we took at the show so take a look see what you missed or see if we caught you on camera on the gallery on the website.
I also caught up with Andy Alexander who is now working for Redvision as a Regional Sales Manager for the North as he lives that way. You may know that Andy has had 15 years in the industry having served with VCL, now Honeywell and 360 Vision, but I bet you not many of you will know that Andy was a semi-professional footballer/manager and a professional tennis coach. Hope he can find time to sell some of those domes.
I also bumped into Yash Patel at the show and it seems he is now working as an electronic business development consultant for iComply in India which is based in new Delhi where they are partnering with with an Indian security firm called Zicom, they deliver alarm monitoring for three national financial institutions.
Likewise can a give a huge thank you to everyone that came along and supported our event in Manchester Security TWENTY 14, our sponsors, exhibitors, speakers and visitors. More about that from page 47. Likewise visit the gallery on our website. Maybe we caught you on camera giving you your 15 minutes of fame?
Other movers in brief:
Scott Brothers has left Axis to be in charge of developing Oncam Grandeye’s 360-degree business in the retail and finance sectors. ASSA ABLOY Security Solutions has a new Managing Director, Eryl Jones, as it decides to focus solely on trade customers. His predecessor David Wigglesworth heads the new specification division of ASSA ABLOY UK
Dave Newbury of Case Security tells me they have appointed two new Directors, Simon Thornber and Clive Hunter as Operations and Sales Directors. Simon has held senior roles within installer Romec, and Clive has been in national account management at ADT and Chubb, and was at Clearview.
Charity: London to Brighton
After the success of the last event, CNL Software decided to join the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton Charity bike ride again, to support this worthy cause and to help them all get into shape. Their team this year – Millie Edgeworth, Colin Sadler, Jon Lunnerfeldt, John Jacovou, Keith Bloodworth, James Candy, Marcel Coleridge, Kumara Raghavendra, Peter Worthington, Duncan Wilde and Adlan Hussain,. Please support them, it’s not too late! Link: https://www.justgiving.com/CNLSoftware-L2B-2014/.
