Manufacturer 1-on-1: VidSys CEO James Chong

March 2, 2015
Company's founder discusses his new role, PSIM industry trends with SIW

Late last month, PSIM software provider VidSys announced that James Chong, the company’s founder and chief technology officer, has been named by its board of directors as their new CEO. In his new role, Chong will be focused on expanding the company’s capabilities to meet growing demand and help scale their offering beyond PSIM into the Internet of Things (IoT) market.

SIW recently caught up with Chong to discuss how he plans to grow the company, as well as the various trends impacting the market for PSIM software.

SIW: Having founded VidSys and served as the company’s CTO for a number of years, how will becoming CEO help you grow the company the way you envision?

Chong: I think this is really a strategic move for us. This is also timed with the activities of the market, as well as where we are as a company with our product. With my role, it is not necessarily undoing anything that we’ve already established, but it is helping us to accelerate even more our innovation agenda as well as to meet the faster growing demand of the market. Also, at the same time, we are looking to expand our capabilities that will take us beyond just the area of physical security into what I’ve been talking about which is physical security plus information management. Ultimately, those things traverse into another area, which is the Internet of Things where more advanced connectivity to sensors and devices will be a part of things that we’ve always done, but also incorporating additional services to create that intelligent services and virtualized services platform. With our browser-based and web-enabled technology that we really had first in this industry… all of these are things we feel are really exciting – not just for the physical security market but from other expanding markets where our product roadmap and maturity model are taking us into.

SIW: Will you have to give up some of your focus on the technology end of things to be able to be able to run the day-to-day business operations of the company?

Chong:  One of the advantages that I think I bring to VidSys is that I am the founder of the company and have always had the responsibility and the ownership of the strategy and the vision. This is simply elevating that to the CEO role where the company, as a whole, will be even more driven by the market, the customers, innovation, and obviously, results. It’s not a situation where I think it is one or the other. This is really implementing, deeper into the company, the specific culture and how our customers, the market and even our partners have really been helping us to grow and create innovation for the existing base of clients, but also what we see as an exciting future base of users.

SIW: What are some of your strategic goals for VidSys in both the short and long-term?

Chong: In my mind, when you talk about and use the word ‘strategic,’ I think that it is about creating high value for the company and also being valued by the customers and the market. From a technology perspective, if we’re going to continue to innovate and continue to expand our capabilities, which again doesn’t just simply address security elements, but really efficiency, automation and convergence where you have cyber and IT, as well as physical security, really coming together. From a strategy perspective, those are going to become even more highlighted and I think that what you will continue to see is that we will help to lead this market that, I believe is really exciting, start to converge with other markets.  I think we’ve already developed a very valuable (intellectual property) and technology in this regard. Through strategic relationships, as well as strategic initiatives, that we will do internally, we are hoping to achieve those goals.

SIW: Where do you feel the industry is currently in relation to adopting PSIM and what are its attitudes towards adopting the software?

Chong:  I would say adoption has certainly gone through ups and downs since the year that I helped coin the term ‘PSIM’ back in 2006. If you look at the evolution of PSIM, say from 2006 to 2010, it was a category that was being challenged and introduced. People were wondering is this really access control on steroids or is this a video management system that has integration capabilities with sensors? Through that evolution from three of four years ago, the market has truly accepted the need as well as the difference that PSIM brings as a tool and as an application and platform to the industry. If we were just to look back at the last year to two years, I believe those were substantial years for the PSIM industry because what we now have are systems integrators that are actually much more familiar with software and applications than the years before that. We also now have customers’ IT organizations that are driving and also a key stakeholder in the decision making process for the adoption of PSIM, which was also very hard to get to. If you know PSIM, it is software that is really part of IT, not necessarily a stand-alone silo. PSIM is really no longer sort of a nice to have or an interesting technology, but it is actually becoming part of the design specifications that even the large architects and engineers are leveraging. Global adoption, from my view, adds another element of validation to this discussion because not only in the U.S, but overseas in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and even South America where we did the World Cup in Rio, adoption definitely has expanded. I do believe that the PS+IM is truly going to start to become the requirement for a lot of these PSIM initiatives.

SIW:  Given the focus on improving the ease-of-use of nearly every type of system these days, is this something that needs to happen with PSIM?

Chong: That is what I believe is the number one requirement for almost any software product company or application because your technology could do incredible things, but at the end of the day, if it is not easy to use or usable by the traditional end users or operators, it won’t be adopted.