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Changes at the top for ObjectVideo, growth predicted

Changes at the top for ObjectVideo, growth predicted

RESTON, Va.--Video analytics market leader ObjectVideo has experienced some changes in the executive suite recently, with the announcement a new CEO and head of the company's technical side, both of whom come from inside the company. 
First, chairman of the board and CEO Raul Fernandez will drop the CEO from his title, and Dave McGuinness will move to CEO from his position as VP of professional services. 
Director of global marketing Ed Troha noted that McGuinness "didn't come from the marketing or sales ranks. He comes from a position of having the most contact and knowledge at the executive level of what we're doing in the field. We think that's most important for moving forward and making sure that the promise of analytics isn't going to be oversold and that there is value in analytics--but you have to find what works for each solution." This is in line, Troha said, with ObjectVideo's strategy of going to market with its 39 OEM partners, 21 of whom now have product for sale with ObjectVideo analytics on board. 
The technical side of this strategy will now be overseen by VP of engineering Gary Myers, who takes over duties held by outgoing CTO Alan Lipton. Lipton has moved on to a position with GE Security outside of the analytics sphere. Myers has headed engineering for the past two years, Troha said, "and, really, a beat hasn't been skipped."
The McGuinness appointment, Troha said, allows someone with more of an operations focus to spend more time "concentrated on working closely with our manufacturing partners to help them develop and sell product."
While he acknowledged that the market acceptance of analytic-enabled products hasn't been as rapid as ObjectVideo had hoped, "we knew it would take time for the products to show up," he said, "and some more time for the adoption of intelligent products in the marketplace. We think it will be a bit slower now because of the economy." However, he said, the global nature of OV's partners protects them from some risk, as does the wide variety of market verticals in which its partners specialize.
Further, he emphasized, "we have a very stable government business ... [and] ... the government is one great customer. They pay on time and they pay well. This is a very solid and dependable source of revenue for us. At a time when market adoption of OEM products is not as fast as we'd like it to be, we're still having commercial success and we're the only company in the space that we're aware of that has an R&D department that's actually a profit center."
"We're trying to make all the right moves to strategically grow the business," Troha said. "It might not be at the pace we had originally hoped, but we'll end 2009 having grown more than we were able to in 2008."
 

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