Consiliant moves with Cisco into IP-based surveillance

IRVINE, Calif.--Founded as a data storage company in 2002, Consiliant Technologies has recently moved into the physical security world as one of Cisco’s first authorized technology providers in the physical security space. Founders Dave Cerniglia and Joe Kadlec, both coming from the IT sector, “had the foresight to diversify the business about a year ago,” said Kevin Dailey, who was brought in at that time to be vice president of IP physical security. Dailey also has an IT background, working with HP and Fiberlink Communications, and he came to video surveillance while exploring new markets for the IBM platform with a former company. “A few years back,” Dailey said, “we came to the understanding that the worlds of IT and physical security were coming together, and that security knew it was time to go embrace the IT world.” Currently, Consiliant (not to be confused with email fulfillment company Consilient Technologies), has three offices in California and one in New York, but Dailey said the company is eyeing a national footprint. “We think we can establish a quick beachhead as a well known Cicso partner,” he said. Recently, the company announced with Cisco a deal with Amtrak to put IP video surveillance at its maintenance facilities in Los Angeles and Oakland. Consiliant teamed Cisco’s SurveillanceManager software, which manages access to video feeds and provides virtual matrix switching, with PSIM software from Proximex and video analytics from AgentVI. “The Amtrak deal is significant,” Dailey said, “in that it’s taking so many disparate types of technologies to find new ways to solve old problems ... Amtrak did consider more traditional alternatives, but they were looking for an alert system that would be proactive and stop problems before they occurred ... It can scale almost infinitely, leveraging their IP network.” This kind of deal is validation of all the convergence talk, he said. “Things really are converging now. Nothing matters until people start writing checks, and they’re writing checks.”