Dean Meyer to head Pelco

CLOVIS, Calif.--Just months after becoming chief operations officer, Dean Meyer has been promoted to the position of Pelco president and chief executive officer, effective Jan. 21, taking over for longtime company leader David L. McDonald, who will continue with the company as chairman of the board. "Dean's tenacity, energy, and strong people skills have quickly earned him the respect of all--including me," said McDonald in a prepared statement. "I am not just comfortable, but truly excited about Pelco's future under Dean's leadership." Meyer came to Pelco quickly after the company was purchased by Schneider Electric in November 2007; Meyer was president of Schneider property TAC Americas for seven years prior. He is now responsible for continuing the transition and organizational refocus as a result of the recent Schneider Electric merger. The first portion of that transition, he said, is complete. As part of the acquisition, Schneider merged Pelco with Integral Technologies. "It's been a full-court press," Meyer said, "merging product-technology roadmaps, back office, logistics. The combined team has really stepped up and for the most part we're done. We're moving forward, thinking and acting like one." For example, "Integral was a much more open-architecture approach," Meyer said. As an indication of some of Pelco's new direction under Schneider, the company has already announced in 2008 a new focus on becoming an "open systems provider." Terry Carver, Pelco API business development manager, said in a separate release that, "Pelco has demonstrated its forward-thinking attitude and commitment toward integration and openness by providing a well-defined API, utilizing widely used non-proprietary interface protocols and the use of standards that were developed and adopted by industry-recognized standards bodies. This has made integration to Pelco products fast and efficient." While this openness was already in the works at Pelco, Meyer said, "but let's just say it's been elevated on our lists of things to do--and to be much more public about the things we're doing in that regard." Similarly, Pelco has taken Integral's access control system and run with it. "Pelco was working on its own access control prior to the merger," Meyer said. "Now Integral brings its own, and we've moved very quickly on marrying that together and presenting that to the channel." So, will Pelco's access system eventually be as universal as its cameras? "Let me dream," Meyer joked. "But Pelco's got a hell of a brand, and integration is becoming more important. We all know that." Finally, Meyer said he's sensitive to concerns coming from the channel about Pelco now being owned by the same company that owns a major integrator in the space, TAC. He said TAC will get no special treatment. "We are a manufacturer that sells our products through dealers and distributors," he emphasized, "and TAC is a dealer, no different than Siemens or ADT. They are an arm's-length partner of ours and we will live with that. That was a foundational decision that preceded the acquisition and one way to destroy the value of Pelco is to complicate things."