Tyco Security Products Aims to Be the Integrator’s Edge
Tyco Security Products (TSP) and Life Safety Products (LSP) President Mike Ryan believes the manufacturer's video surveillance solutions, among others, are tough to beat.
Is that indicative of what might be a model for acquisitions moving forward with Tyco Security Products, keeping the acquired property fairly intact and maintaining that brand? Or is it more of a case-by-case decision? What’s the acquisitions strategy?
Ryan: That’s a good question. I hate to punt on this but it really is a case-by-case basis. What I mean by that is if you have an offe
ring and a brand with a presence in the market, like Exacq, that has power and recognition; it would be silly not to try and take advantage of that. Sometimes you’d do an acquisition on a smaller company and you acquire them because of some piece of technology that they have. You wouldn’t necessarily brand that one separately. Sometimes you’d buy a company because in a particular country they have a very strong channel. You may or may not then take that brand. There’s always a balance between distinction in your brands, and confusion and overlap. We do think about that. But our strategy would be continuing to focus on different customer segments and if that means acquiring other video companies to help us do that, then that’s what we’re going to do.
Let’s talk about the integrator partners, dealer partners, and resellers. What are some of the specific ways Tyco Security Products supports and benefits them?
Ryan: Again, it’s all about building relationships with the channel partners and the integrators. I was just at a Software House integrators’ gathering a couple of weeks ago and got to meet some of the integrators for the first time. I was struck by how many of them have been with Software House for 15 and 20 years. By the way, the Software House sales guys have been there for a long time too. You can see their knowledge of Software House and Software House’s knowledge of their businesses. It’s really very difficult to replicate that.
We have certain things we do to build and promote those relationships, things like integrator advisory councils. We just announced not long ago a 19-city North American roadshow where we’re introducing and bringing our integrators and channel partners up to date on new products and training. We have a dealer certification program that makes sure all the integrators are up to speed on the latest training and latest technology. If you took each element one by one, maybe you’d have a hard time making the argument that we’re better than anyone else in that regard. But if you put the whole picture together, with all the different components, with the primary driver being relationship and stability of the business partnerships, I do think it’s distinctive. We see that in a lot of areas around Tyco Security Products.
One of the top buzz terms now in the long line of integration and convergence is Big Data. The concept of converting disparate data into actionable intelligence to create greater value for an enterprise, does Tyco Security Products have a solution aimed at that? How do you see that evolving?
Ryan: This topic around networks, sensors, connectivity, actionable data, then managed services or other value-added services is an intense discussion within Tyco Security Products. When you step back and look at it, most of the electronic devices, electromechanical devices or sensors today continuously or have the ability to continuously transmit data, whether that’s about their status, performance, usage. You think about wireless networks being more reliable, better bandwidth capacity. When you talk about Big Data, to me it’s still a very nascent and emerging industry. But some of the consumer companies, like Netflix for example, are making some developments and progress there.
We recognize it, we see it. We have no question in our mind that over some period of time that’s going to change the security products and security industry landscape. So far, when you think about buildings and facilities, you pretty much have seen maybe some remote monitoring. Maybe you see some remote diagnostics, but it’s still pretty spotty and it’s still very much in the early stages of development and application. I promise you, this does have our attention. We do see the opportunity to create value for our channel partners and our customers. We’re going to continue to invest, develop, monitor, experiment.
One thing I skipped in those buzz terms was the cloud, which is still very much with us. How is the move to the cloud influencing Tyco Security Products?
Ryan: One of the things we think is in our advantage on the access control side is our scalability. If you think about Software House and where it gets deployed today and some of our analysis and simulations about the scalability of Software House, there is a clear path to creating more value for enterprise customers, potentially for our channel partners, and for ourselves when you can enable that scale through a cloud-computing infrastructure, cloud administration and cloud analytics. Back to my earlier comments, we are still in the relatively early days in our development, in our thinking. But there is no question that at some point in the future you’re going to have convergence here on various technologies that are going to change the look, feel, and capabilities of our current product offerings.
With ISC West imminent, what’s new that we should be on the lookout for?
Ryan: We’ll show some convergence at ISC West in April. We’ll show a full briefing and visibility on our PowerG wireless technology, specifically into our new PowerSeries Neo intrusion panel that brings in some small business and commercial security applications. We’ll be able to show people live the new integrations and capabilities with Exacq, C•CURE and Kantech. We’ve also made a lot of additions to our Illustra IP video camera line. We’d love to host any interested attendee in the booth. It’s well worth their time.
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About the Author
Scott Goldfine
Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].
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