Controlware to focus on U.S.

NEPTUNE, N.J.--German networked video firm Controlware Communications has opened North American offices here, looking to capitalize on a history working with video over IP. National sales manager for IP solutions Larry Greenwald will head the office along with Marty Schutt, North American operations head. Dominic Papenheim, executive vice president of sales for Controlware, based in Germany, said the company has 600 employees worldwide, bringing in about $125 million in revenues annually. The company began by manufacturing monitoring devices for leased communications lines, then expanded into developing video codecs for the security market by investing in a firm called VCS, which sold last year to Bosch Security. "Basically," said Papenheim, "we are coming from the IT/telecom world with a dedicated and deep knowledge of the IT side of security ... Combined with our IP knowledge, this makes us a valuable partner." Controlware manufactures a video management platform and is a reseller of Bosch IP cameras. The company has recently been successful in the transportation vertical, having provided codecs to the Aeroports de Paris surveillance systems and traffic monitoring projects in the United Kingdom. Papenheim described the company as "big proponents of open architecture and open standards," and thus said Controlware specialized in "customer-specific adaptations" that work with a number of manufacturer's products. This is also indicative of Controlware's still-evolving approach to the market. Papenheim listed companies as diverse as Pelco, Tyco and ObjectVideo as competitors, "But [the video surveillance] market is very immature. It's a very dynamic market which is still not 100 percent. It helps day-to-day work, but I think a lot of improvement needs to be done."