VideoNEXT gets $2 million for marketing help

VIENNA, Va.--Software firm videoNEXT received $2 million in its first round of institutional funding in late February, funds that will be used to help market its camera and access control management software to large-scale systems integrators. The funding came from Newlight Associates, a New York firm, and Longstreet Partners, an investment bank in Vienna, Va. Up until now, videoNEXT relied on funding from its management team, made up of chief executive officer Chris Gettings, chief technology officer Dave Marra and chief financial officer George Devaux, to get the business started in 2002 and to develop its NEXTcam software that links video, access control, radar and other sensors on a single dashboard. The recent cash infusion will help the company hire additional sales people, and a team of five business development managers who will bring onboard up to 10 integration partners to work with the firm. Some of the $2 million investment will also help the company identify OEM partners. "We can beef up our infrastructure and focus on marketing and sales," said Gettings. "The product development has come along nicely." The three came up with the idea for the company after first pursuing the video conferencing market. They changed their focus after seeing similarities between the video conferencing market and the surveillance market. "Video conferencing is very interesting, but it has never been a must have," said Gettings. "Pretty quickly we changed our focus to security." Marra said the company saw an opportunity to leverage IT with security, a market still dominated by analog technology such as time-lapse VCRs and matrix switches, with few real IT solution. "To solve those problems, reinventing the wheel is a bad practice," said Marra. "But developing software to leverage best practices and information technology was the best way to solve this problem." In addition to hiring several sales people, videoNEXT plans to announce several new products in the coming months, developed in conjunction with the military and university laboratories.