Qognify looks to redefine itself in the VMS market

April 11, 2019
Company VP chats with SIW about their market strategy in the wake of last year’s acquisition of OnSSI, SeeTec

In late December, Qognify made a move designed to strengthen its position in global VMS market when it acquired OnSSI and its German-based subsidiary SeeTec GmbH. It the months that have followed, the companies’ leadership teams have worked to merge their respective operations and bring them all under the banner of the parent organization.

According to Ken LaMarca, the former VP of Sales and Marketing at OnSSI who now serves as VP of Sales for Qognify, both Qognify and OnSSI had a very similar philosophy when it came to their solutions and both companies tended to focus on customers that placed a premium on physical security.

“It made perfect sense to bring the companies together,” LaMarca says. “The combined organization has a huge, expanded global customer base and a network of channel and technology partners that really focus on the technological competency of our product in the prevailing market. It really improves our ability to serve large international customers in terms of global services and integrated solutions.”

OnSSI and SeeTec Company Brands Eliminated

And though OnSSI and SeeTec will be going away as brands in the VMS space, LaMarca says that they are “fully committed” to all their products, that there are no plans to eliminate them and that they will continue to develop and support them. LaMarca adds that product names, such as Ocularis and Cayuga, will also be retained to preserve the name recognition and support they have in the marketplace.   

However, LaMarca says they felt that bringing the companies together under the Qognify umbrella was the best decision for the business overall as they examined the evolving landscape of the industry.  

“Moving forward with the one brand gives us a much stronger focus and a higher awareness level within the industry,” he says. “The one combined organization can be stronger; we can all move in the same direction and act as one.” 

Operations and R&D Synergies

Ironically, even before the acquisition took place, LaMarca says that both Qognify and OnSSI operated out of the same building several floors apart in Pearl River, N.Y., and that U.S. headquarters for the company moving forward will remain there. Qognify’s future research and development activities will take place in hubs located in Germany and Israel.

“Bundling these two together will facilitate the transfer of knowledge, expand our technical competencies and expertise, and support the core development teams and improve the outcomes for customers,” LaMarca adds. “In addition, we continue to have local sales staff as well as regional offices throughout Europe and Asia. We want to ensure that we are geographically close to our customers and our partners by maintaining a local touch and we basically want to develop a much stronger development team in Germany and Israel.”

Go-to-Market Roadmap

When it comes to product lines, LaMarca says the goal of Qognify moving forward will be on optimizing outcomes and that having what is now a broader portfolio of VMS solutions helps them address specific end-user needs more effectively. LaMarca says the go-to-market strategy for the respective product lines – VisionHub, Ocularis and Cayuga – will also be relatively unchanged but he emphasized the need to remain flexible in that. 

“Because of the complexity of our customers’ needs or the industries in which they operate, we’re going to have to be flexible in our go-to-market strategies,” he explains. “Our real focus is just to continue to deliver the solutions they need to achieve the required outcomes. I do not see huge changes in the go-to-market strategies as they seem to be working for the three product brands and Qognify as a company.”

Having a wide range of products to be able to tailor solutions to needs of individual end-users will be a key differentiator for Qognify moving forward, according to LaMarca.

“It’s no longer a one-size-fits-all. There may be some overlap but we will always guide our partners and customers in order to create a solution that best fits their needs,” he adds. “This also includes incident management solutions, which is also a part of enterprise-class physical security projects. So, the ability for us to share developments across VMS platforms creates an exciting opportunity for our customers and partners. For example, integrations – camera integrations, gateways, user interfaces, analytics, and mobile applications – can now be shared across the platforms, so it should result in much shorter time to market and much more robust integrations.” 

About the Author: 

Joel Griffin is the Editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].