Abram joins Vitek

VALENCIA, Calif.--After 22 years in the security industry, moving from product manager at Mosler to VP positions at Panasonic and Sanyo, Frank Abram remains ready for new challenges. In September, he left Sanyo and has resurfaced now as vice president of sales at Vitek, serving under CEO Greg Bier.

It's part of an effort on Vitek's part, said Bier, “to step into the next level, where you're going to find players like Pelco and Bosch ... and I think Frank is going to help expose the Vitek name to many customers who haven't given us a chance yet.”

“Making a brand name a household name brand is a difficult thing to do,” he continued, “So you have to do it by reputation. We've been doing it slowly but surely over the years, and we've got many integrators carrying the product that are satisfied with it, but we want to expand our exposure.”

Abram said the Vitek product line - CCTV products ranging from monitors to DVRs to cameras, with some IP presence - “compares extremely favorably” to the products he's accustomed to working with in past roles. “The important thing about Vitek,” he said, “and what is going to allow us to make some very significant inroads into the systems dealers and integrators, is that Vitek is able to react quickly to take care of customers, and that's true with business issues and with product issues, new product development. The lead times are just so much shorter with Vitek.”

Bier said that allows Vitek to “have a product that's equal or better in performance ... for a little less money than [dealers and integrators have been] paying.”

Going forward, Abram said Vitek would emphasize training - “I've always been a firm believer that a manufacturer has a responsibility to train the dealers if we're going to be successful with those dealers” - and developing a more robust IP product line, but he said analog will remain a good business for Vitek.

“Dealers and installers and end users will give the figure of a 32-camera system before you break even with IP,” Abram said. “There aren't a lot of new 32-camera systems going in ... There is still a tremendous amount of analog business out there. Granted, it is going to go away eventually, but for 2009, 2010, and probably a couple of years beyond that, there is still going to be a significant amount of analog business in this industry.”