Monitor This!

So I'm sitting in my hotel right now down in Charlotte, N.C. for ESX. It was a good trip... Not as eventful as some of my other travel days, but I did have a security industry exec recognize in the airport in Charlotte, which was at once kind of weird and at the same time a little gratifying. I assume that means you guys are reading our blogs and watching our videos over at ssnTVnews. Feels good.

I'm ready to check out ESX tomorrow and am looking forward to the CSAA and ESA tracks as well as some of the meetings I have set up so far. Avid readers of my blog will recall that at last year's show in Pittsburgh, I shared an elevator with a Verizon exec checking out the show floor... I never did get any responses out of that telco rep, depsite numerous emails... There were certainly big telco announcements in the last year, however. I have a meeting set up this year with some security industry suppliers and another telco that promises some big news... Stay tuned for more.

Avid readers of this blog will also recall that just about this time last year, I was also on the road along with SSN associate publisher Gregg Shapiro. We were on a lightning tour of the Lonestar State's security heavy hitters...

Is it coincidence that Gregg and I again shared a flight? This time down to N.C.? Coincidence that we once again found ourselves schlepping over to a rental car counter and plugging in a vaguley Brittish-sounding GPS device to locate my hotel? I think not!

Now, if you check out the picture from this year, you'll see that we weren't quite riding in the same style as last year, but one can't be upgraded to a cherry-red Camaro every time, I suppose...

Drop by SSN's booth #900 and see us. We'd love to say hi and catch up on what's going on and how your show's going.

And incidentally, if you haven't downloaded your ESX app yet, get going! That's one slick little app. Functional and useful!

I went on a road trip this past weekend. I've been on road trips before, down to the CSAA Fall Operations Management Seminar, down to G4S' Monitoring and Data Center, down to Viewpoint CRM, over to the Rapid Response Users' Group and last summer down to visit a whole bunch of security peeps in the Lonestar State.

This past weekend, I traveled down to Lynn, Mass. to check in on an ongoing deployment of FST21's SafeRise solution at a senior housing complex. It's not the first time I've been to Lynn... I visited Wayne Alarm and Ralph Sevinor's security industry museum back in 2008. It's also not the first time I've written about FST21. I first covered them when they came to the U.S. from Israel, and SSN covered them when Kent Security checked them out. I also wrote a blog post recently about ion247 monitoring the solution at a senior housing facility down south.

I met with them at ISC West, where they won product of the year in SIA's New Product Showcase. It was nice to sit down with the folks at FST21, the folks at Ocean Shores Apartments, the folks at DCRM (I'm pictured above with DCRM president Tina Simolaris), which worked in a consulting capacity with property management (with whom I aslo met). I also met, via conference call, with the folks from ion247, a monitoring center that's monitoring the SafeRise solution, and with the folks from Chubb who did the integration of the smart building system.

Dave Dearborn of consultants DCRM hosted the meeting and brought all the players together at Ocean Shores for a sit down discussion and demonstrations of the solution in action. Tune back in to SSN Videos in the coming days for a video of that visit.

One thing everyone agreed on was that this project exemplified where the future of security/access/surveillance might be headed. Solutions are becomming more complex conglomerations of what used to be disparate systems. It's all about offering more services, more uses for the infrastructure than just video or just intrusion or just mass notification or just access. It was a neat visit.

I'll provide more coverage of this and other FST21 projects going forward.

So I was going through my email the other day and I came across a press release from video monitoring company Iverify. Seems they recently won a pretty hefty video monitoring and loss prevention services (LP) contract with an unnamed major U.S. retailer. I jumped right on it and got some fresh feedback from Iverify president Mike May. I'm still sort of hopeful that the reatiler will come around and release its name, but until that happens, here are the particulars written up along with some of the feedback I got from my interview with Mike:

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Iverify on April 27 announced it had been awarded a five-year contract valued at $39 million dollars to provide guard replacement and shrink-reduction services for an unnamed national retailer throughout its 550 stores. According to a release from the company, it’s the largest such video monitoring contract in the history of the industry.

Iverify president Mike May said Iverify brought big savings to the table for the client.

“The client is using a robust application that uses Cernium analytics for location-based risk assessment that triggers local announcements in the vicinity of high-shrink products. Further, with sophisticated time-based analysis it then escalates the risk profile and engages a live intervention from a protection specialist,” May told Security Systems News. “They then assess and respond to a protocol based in the actual risk. This is a best case model leveraging intelligent video coupled with a loss-prevention certified specialist that responds and reduces the customer’s potential shrink losses.”

According to May, Iverify will provide its “I Guard” and “I Control” products, delivering projected savings of $62.5–$70 million.  The suite of services will reduce guard costs, lower losses from theft, and improve employee safety, according to May.

“We think we have developed an effective forward-leaning service that drives value and safety to the point of protection,” May said.

Michael Barnes, a partner in the consulting and advisory firm Barnes Associates, which specializes in the security alarm industry, and co-sponsors the Barnes Buchanan Conference, felt Iverify had a lot to offer.

“Iverify has been at the forefront of delivering improved value in security operations for national retailers while reducing the cost of security expense,” Barnes said in a statement. “Mike May has built a sophisticated team of loss prevention professionals that remotely deliver security services at a very low cost. They have driven robbery and shrink rates down by over 50 percent at a number of national retailers.”

Iverify’s May made headlines in SSN a year ago when he was onsite doing a risk assessment for a client, a large, urban retail store in Detroit. While he was there a gang of youths attacked, and brutally beat a lone individual. May’s quick action—prompted by 10 years of law enforcement and EMT experience—very likely saved the victim’s life.

I got an email from MJ Vance the other  day and leanrd that she's left CenterPoint Technologies. She's not sure where she's going yet, but is keeping all her prospects open. Asked why she was moving on, MJ said the departure was amicable and simply a sign of growth.

MJ also told me that she wants to stay within the security industry, and is particularly interested in the PERS industry. In the meantime, she said she "may take the summer off and ride cross country on my Harley."

I wrote not too long ago about another well-known and well-liked leader in the central station space moving over into PERS when Southwest Dispatch's VP Ty Davis moved to Life Alert.

I first interviewed MJ back during my first trip to ISC West in 2008. I interviewed her on camera for our then newly-launched ssnTVnews. That was a popular interview on our site--testament to MJ's stature in the industry.

I also spoke with MJ in 2010 when she hired a new operations manager and won the Presidential Award from the Fire Marshal’s Association of Missouri (pictured above).

Good luck MJ!