The 'official' ISC round-up

As promised, here are the rest of my adventures in Vegas.

*Proximex Surveillint 3.0 won the New Product Showcase in the convergence category. I spent time chatting with Al Liebel and Diane M.Z. Robinette about the company and the product. What I like best is that it guides security personnel through your company's policies if there is a situation that needs extra attention. Al said the command-and-control software takes "people out of the process as much as possible." In my opinion, I think it empowers employees to make decisions by providing them with the data they need to effectively do their jobs.

*I caught up with two ex-Cisco workers. Bob Beliles, now vice president of Enterprise Business Development for Hirsch Electronics, said the company will be taking a more aggressive stance in the market and noted that identity initiatives — FIPS 201, HSPD-12 — will have a trickle down effect, driving business in the corporate space.
I caught up with Mark Kolar, who with Beliles was integral in building Cisco's physical security business, over at his new company Agent Vi, where he serves at vice president of Channel Programs for the Americas. Kolar's enthusiasm regarding Agent's edge analytics is infectious. He and Rob Hile, vice president of business development for integration partner Adesta, told me about Agent's new "3-for-free" promo, which allows businesses to deploy any three of the company's analytics applications through it or its channel partners on up to three IP cameras for as long as 90 days. After the trial, companies that order more Agent Vi analytics for at least 10 cameras can keep the initial three free to change for the duration of the license. Pretty cool, huh?

*Ionit Technologies announced that it has completed the installation of its DVRs at 6,200 Walgreens facilities and distribution centers nationwide. Jim Talbot, CEO and founder of Ionit, said this is "a lot more than a DVR." Rather, it is a data collection system. I'm also hoping to catch up with Ken Amos, director of loss prevention for Walgreen's, this week.

*I sat down with Steve Walin, chairman and CEO at GVI Security/Samsung Electronics, and he was happy to report that the company is back in the black after some dismal financial and industry results. Now, GVI has experienced four quarters of profitability and Walin said that signifies a financial turnaround. GVI also launched its first line of IP products and annouced a line of $1.5 million in funding from Samsung to increase its market share. The goal is to "double our market share in three years," he said. It is currently marked at 2 percent in the Americas.

*As for the nightlife, it was plentiful as always. GE Security held a pretty neat party at Tao in the Venetian, so did Dedicated Micros the evening before. ADI held its annual customer bash at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay with a band that played some cool Pink Floyd covers. Pelco had its party on Thursday night as well, but as with prior years I was left without a ticket. I did hear it was a good time from Pelco's CEO Dean Meyers — with two remaining members of Creedence Clearwater Revival taking the stage. As with any event in Vegas, these things are tough to get into. I found myself waiting behind a velvet rope and a bouncer to get in at a majority of them because they hit capacity early.

Back home

I had great intentions of posting news throughout the three days of the show and I succeeded the first day. But ISC is challenging — the exhibitors demand your time, PR people demand your time, and I demand that some of my time is spend catching up with our readers and attending educational sessions. Couple that with dinners and cocktail parties, lunches, breakfasts, networking as well as some fun and I end up one tired security journalist.

I have much to catch up on (including sleep) and first thing tomorrow morning I plan on going through all my notes and delivering all the important stuff from ISC to you tomorrow.

ISC West, Day 1

So I've already filled you in on the Axis breakfast, that leaves about 10 more meetings to fill you in on.

*UTC Fire & Security outlined its product lines: Lenel, Onity, Verex and Guardall. Michale Regelski, CTO, said the company will "leverage expertise across the brands to build the most hassle free security solutions." They also took the time to relay its focus on service, service, service. In all honesty, the execs at UTC kept repeating the buzz phrases I love: Interoperability, 24/7 technical support and business intelligence.

They even noted that many times in this market a product is designed without concern to underlying customer needs. How long have I been saying that? Like I need another excuse to bring up this month's Security Director NewsPoll.

*I sat down with Mariann McDonagh with Verint (check out her recent contribution to SDN on our editorial page) and Dick O'Leary from EMC to chat about the companies' partnership. EMC recently made a pretty big announcement and said this market holds substantial opportunity for the IT vet.

*ADT has some interesting points on city surveillance projects, which are a pretty big opportunity for the integrator. They also focused on the service aspect of the integration business, highlighting its ADT Select Managed Services at the booth.

*Software-as-a-service provider Envysion posted its largest sales month to date last month, said Matt Steinfort, president and CEO of the company. He also noted that the service is making strides in the hospitality industry and in check cashing stores.

*Stanley's Tony Byerly came by to chat about the company's rebranding — now everything is under the Stanley Convergent Security Solutions as well as the company's acquisition of A-1.

More to come later.

Launching point

After a night of roulette, Sake-vodka martinis and sushi, I'm back at work. This morning, Axis Communications introduced its new family of products — Axis camera station 3.0 video management software, P3301 network camera with H.264 and video encoder solutions that support H.264. For those of you who follow my blog and are not familiar with Axis, the company reported they sold their one millionth network camera in 2007 at a press event in Copenhagen.

The focus at this morning's breakfast definitely centered around the compression standard, H.264. Ray Mauritsson, Axis CEO, said he anticipates in two years time that 50 percent of the market would be based on H.264.

Why? Nilsson said there is so much power behind it, "IPhones, Blu-Ray everything is H.264."

Bon voyage

Since I'll be out of pocket for the rest of today and most of the day tomorrow traveling to Vegas, I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you all who will be at ISC West that I will be at booth no. 23149 between 1-3 p.m. on Thursday, April 3, to chat about a host of security industry topics. Old and new friends welcome.

To entice you, I will also have something new to unveil, which I promise to update you all on later this week.

Also, this week I'll have reports from the show floor — what technology is cool, who is on site, what educational sessions are rockin' and which aren't. As well as my regular updates on the nightlife and networking that make these large shows so damn exhausting.

For all of you heading west, safe travels. See you tomorrow.

Informal poll

How many of you are going to be at ISC West? Just leave me a comment and let me know why you are attending and what your position is. (Don't worry — you can leave your name out of it.) I'm just trying to get a feel for how many security leaders will be at the show this year. Here's how Reed Exhibitions breaks it up:



Also, I have a slight correction to make: I will be at our booth, # 23149, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on THURSDAY, April 3, for a little meet and greet, not each day of the show.

Your Vegas is showing

In two weeks I will be enjoying all the warm weather, cigarette smoke, product demonstrations, slot machine sounds and networking that ISC West and Las Vegas offers. My schedule is already jammed pack for the three days of the show — for those of you who don't know, the exhibitors at the show schedule 20-minute appointments with the press to share the latest and greatest products, contracts and company news. I'm not big on the whole dog-and-pony show, but it really isn't up to me. If you, the readers, want to hear some product round-up from the show let me know and I'll be happy to deliver. If you want me to relax, gamble a bit and enjoy a glass of wine, I'm happy to do that as well.

In all seriousness, I'm at the show to bring you the information you need from these companies and I'll do my best to bring the most relevant stuff back.

And if you are going to be at the show, I'll be at SDN's booth #23149 from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. for a little meet and greet. Come by and tell me what you think of the publication, what you'd like to see us cover in the future and how you think we can better serve you.

My colleague over at SSN, Martha Entwistle, got me in a Viva Las Vegas mood yesterday and last night I watched Oceans 13. My favorite quote in that movie is when Roman is talking about a state-of-the-art security system that Danny and Rusty want to shut down and he says, "You're analog players in a digital world." I couldn't find that clip so instead, you get this one (still security friendly):



I can only hope my trip turns out to be so lucky.