Edge-Integration taps industry vet

OAKLAND, Calif.--After less than two months on the job, Dennis Raefield, former president of Honeywell's Access Systems Group, isn't regretting for a second his decision to come out of retirement to help lead young IP-based access control firm Edge-Integration as president. "Someone asked me to come in and look at the product and give an opinion of it," Raefield said, "and I went in there with my industry experience, thinking it was designed by folks outside the industry and I was kind of skeptical that I'd be there more than 20 minutes before deciding it wasn't any good. Six hours later I was in love with the product." Now, he said, "I'm the industry guy, running sales and marketing, and Glenn [Forrester, the CEO] is the operations guy. We have had absolutely fantastic acceptance of this product from the integrators. I promised I'd sell 20 or 30 of these by January, and I sold a dozen in the first day I demoed them ... this is the hottest thing in access control that I've ever seen, and I'm amazed at how stable it is and how it hits the market needs." Raefield said the Edge-Integration Access Control System is installed with just a panel onsite, and is then managed and served through Edge's central servers. This pleases IT departments because it only calls out, and doesn't offer a portal into the network for hackers; it doesn't require additional software from D.I.C.E., MAS or Bold, as it looks and exports like an alarm panel to central stations; and it has a robust way of alerting series of people of alarms in a number of different fashions, Raefield said. However, "the real issues," he continued, "is that we don't try to manage the customer. The dealer gets to sell and do managed services."