Continental View

After months of speculation about how it would fare during the economic crisis, IFSEC opened its doors on Monday, and after a pretty quiet morning, the show floor began to pick up speed in the afternoon.

Even before the show opened, though, IFSEC got some good news when Norbain announced that it had reached a “long-term deal” with event organizers to return as an exhibitor in 2010.

The new location for this year’s show (welcomed by everyone I spoke to) in halls on the near side of the NEC makes it a little harder to compare last year’s event to this year’s. On one hand, there is a somewhat smaller feel and fewer of the mammoth stands from previous years. On the other hand, with over 600 exhibitors, it’s hardly a shadow of its former self, either.

Monday was officially “international day” and the international aspect of the show was evident in my schedule of meetings, though maybe more by luck than design. Of 8 meetings I had today, only two of them were with UK-based companies.

One of those was with Saab, which is going full speed ahead in the security sector. Saab is an example of one of the companies that actually upsized its presence at IFSEC this year, and that seemed to be paying off, as they already had a healthy number of visitors on their stand Monday morning. Saab’s specialty is taking technology developed for the military sector and adapting that for civil applications, with an emphasis on command and control systems for critical infrastructure deployment, from power plants and airport to prisons, port and border security. The company’s David Andersen explained that outside of the Nordic region, the UK is considered one of its key markets. All of Saab’s intelligent area surveillance systems are designed to be especially easy to use, and to also deliver mobile surveillance options.

Germany’s Basler, which just entered the IP camera market last year, is another example of a company with roots outside the security industry that is doubling down on its security business during the tough economy. Basler’s Anke Wuebbelmann told me the company, which has its basis in machine vision technology, had recently made the decision to invest even more to develop its line of IP cameras for security applications at the expense of some other non-security areas the company is active in. At IFSEC this year Basler is touting a number of new partnerships, including with Lenel, Exacq, Alnet and OnSSI. The company has also just launched training programs for partners and distributors, and will be starting road shows as well. Basler is not just going after the European market—Wuebbelmann said they’re busy building up their sales channels in the U.S. and Asia, and towards that end, the company recently established a new subsidiary in Taiwan.

Over at Barco, visitors could see the European unveiling the company’s impressive narrow-bezel 46” LCD display with WXGA resolution. The tiled LCDs have several advantages, the company’s Jan De Maeyer told me, including the fact that they consume less power than plasma displays, and as they are nearly completely flat, they require almost no backspace, making them ideal for small or medium-sized control rooms.

Milestone’s stand seemed as busy as usual, and Courtney Dillon Pederson said the company’s business on the UK market is still going strong despite the economy here. While Milestone hasn’t been completely immune to the global downturn, and the rocketing growth of last year won’t be repeated this year (the company doubled its workforce last year), Milestone is still on track to add employees this year and expects strong double-digit growth.

The Scotland-based Veracity has a simple but noble mission: to make the life of the installer easier. Less than 4 years old, Veracity has already made quite a splash in the security industry, with its family of products that focus on solving connectivity problems in system design and deployment of IP-based video surveillance projects. Veracity comes at the IP issue with the viewpoint that Ethernet networks are not usually designed with a security surveillance system in mind. Powering devices on the network is a relatively new thing, and legacy IP networks may need upgrading to guarantee enough levels of PoE power.  Highwire, the company’s first product, which was introduced in 2006, converts existing analog co-axial video cable into a high-speed Ethernet connection. Its Outreach line of products, introduced last year, extend the local area network and PoE by 100 meters each, with multiple Outreach units allowing for extensions of up to 1,000 meters. This year at IFSEC the company introduced Pinpoint, basically an adaptor that simplifies for installers the set-up and focus of PoE-enabled network cameras. Unlike analog cameras, which can be set up using a portable analog video LCD monitor, IP cameras require decoding and decompression of the digital video stream for display. With Pinpoint, PoE can be passed through to the camera, while allowing a local laptop or PDA to be networked directly to the camera, saving time and cost by letting the installer have full on-site control of the set-up by viewing live images from the camera as he’s installing it.

IFSEC’s series of free seminars also began on Monday, and I squeezed in a visit to a talk by Simon Adcock, managing director of the UK system integrator Atec Security, about how to pitch for IP projects. I’ll have more on this in our weekly newswire, but suffice it to say that Adcock is a qualified source on this topic – his company has gone from being a specialist in analog installations to today doing 75 percent of its business in IP CCTV installations in just four years.