3VR Security announced CEO changes this morning, with prior CEO Stephen Russell moving to the position of chairman and Robert Allen "Al" Shipp coming aboard as CEO. Shipp brings a background from Apple Computer, where he served as vice president of Apple's Enterprise Division.
According to the company, bringing Shipp to 3VR readies it for greater growth and sales thanks to his enterprise background at Apple.
Shipp said, however, that there are differences in the model between Apple and 3VR. With his work at Apple, where he oversaw the sale of solutions like OS X-enabled servers, he was working primarily with the leaders of a company's IT organization. In the world of physical security, however, he'll also need to be working with physical security executives. That, he says, makes a difference in how you offer your solutions.
"The sense of urgency of the problem is somewhat different," said Shipp. "When you speak with the CIO, you’re trying to talk to them about how to install software, how to manage it, what it will take to add this to their current network. [But] in security, some of our customers have an immediate problem or security exposure to address."
But the background in IT should be a plus, said Shipp.
"The folks, for the most part, that make security decisions are in a different part of the organization," said Shipp. "But as they take security more seriously, I think you will see CIOs and IT more involved in the security division."
3VR has been one of the early providers of facial recognition tools. Its systems allow for face matching and the company says that it supports "the largest private facial recognition deployment in the world." The company is known for its video recording solutions (hybrid DVRs and NVRs) which allow end users to search through archived video for events and recognizable objects. Functions of the 3VR technology, besides basic recording of video, include the aforementioned facial recognition, plus license plate recognition (LPR), and object-based video motion detection analytics.
"We take investigations that took weeks and we do them in seconds," explained 3VR Chairman Stephen Russell.
According to Shipp, the goal now is to take 3VR's technology and move beyond solely being a product manufacturer, and into the realm of developing 3VR as a platform.
"The ultimate question is 'Where does this go?,'" said Shipp. "The first major step is 3VR as a platform. We'll not only have the capability we provide, but we’ll also support the capabilities of others. This [3VR] engineering team is not slowing down for anything. We want it to become faster and more extensible. There is software that has to be developed alongside of this, but there will be a lot of great changes coming out over the next six months and this year."
Besides developing 3VR into a platform, the company has been focused on growing its integrator partnerships.
According to Russell, the company has jumped from 50 integrator partners a year ago to 80 integrator partners today. The company lists such firms as Diebold, Niscayah and NAVCO System among its integrators list, and Russell says 3VR is still growing its channel.
