Adesta partners with vertical market approach

OMAHA, Neb.-Though it is not an exclusive arrangement, systems integrator Adesta has entered into a strategic alliance with physical security information management software manufacturer Orsus that includes opportunities for product development and marketing support. " We wanted to find out who had the best open API," said Adesta vice president of business development Rob Hile, "who had the best engineering support, who's going to help with marketing, who's going to help with PR, who can we partner with and still be product agnostic? Other companies, they want to be the sole provider of software. Orsus says they want to earn your business, let you work with other vendors." Plus, he said, "they're well funded, they've got a nice strategy, and they're committed to command and control." As Adesta has focused toward installations at ports and dams, for example, Hile appreciates that Orsus understands the operational model of those businesses, "they understand how these customers go about responding to situations that are considered emergencies." He said while his customers often have to sit down with a PSIM maker and explain the day-to-day realities of how they run their businesses, Orsus has committed to these specific verticals, "and they're tweaking their technology to fit those verticals," Hile said. "I can't tell you what that does for us in the ease of sale, that they're spending R&D money and marketing dollars in the same vertical we are. When I get to the customer, they've already heard abut my company and the platform I want to use." Hile saw his partnership with Orsus as representative of two emerging trends in the industry. First, he expects integrators to continue to focus on specific verticals, "because there's so much intellectual capital" needed to do increasingly sophisticated jobs correctly. Second, he thinks VAR councils, or other boards of integrators, will increasingly be adopted by manufacturers as part of the product development process, reasoning, "if we partner with the 10 or 12 companies that give us the most business, we don't have to keep encountering the same problems over and over again." ssn