Jeff Burgess is the President and CEO of BCDVideo out of the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, IL. With the rapid growth of the overall IP-video surveillance market, BCDVideo is experiencing significant growth by generating a 30% CAGR over the past two years and has become one of the most trusted names in video surveillance system building. BCDVideo has been involved in some of the largest IP-based video surveillance installations with their solutions recording video on six continents, in 33 countries, and in a number of different vertical markets.

SecurityHive caught up with Burgess to discuss the rise of BCDVideo and where he sees the video surveillance / physical security industry headed.

SecurityHive: You started Burgess Computer Decisions (BCD) first; what got you into physical security / video surveillance market and the creation of BCDVideo?

Burgess: I had been selling to various GE companies since 1993. Opened my own company in 1999. Around 2002, we began to build servers for GE Security, pretty much unaware that they were recording video. In 2008, a fluke incident had me meeting the area manufacturers rep for both GE cameras as well as OnSSI software.

One thing led to another – the manufacturers rep’s integrators were getting killed by DELL’s lack of support and he was looking for a system builder. It was a perfect fit. Ironically, GE Security’s video software was actually Genetec OEM, so in that vein, we have been building Genetec servers for 13 years. We saw the need and seized the opportunity

 

SecurityHive: The rapid advancement of video camera capabilities has put a tremendous load on the storage end of the infrastructure. BCDVideo seems to be focusing on the storage end of the market. Why and what do you see as the opportunities in this part of the market?
Burgess: When I first came into this market, it was after 30 years of being in IT. Let’s just say it was a culture shock after building servers for Fortune 500 companies. It was pretty heavily saturated in white box, what we call “Dr. Frankenstein boxes”, SATA drives, no on-site warranty, if any, it was depot or parts exchange, and very little attention paid to the I/O bandwidth capabilities within the box.

Then again, the market was fairly analog-saturated, so horsepower was irrelevant. BCDVideo was among the pioneers of an IT infrastructure in regards to I/O bandwidth, end-to-end 6G SAS backplanes, and onsite warranty coverage.

For most end customers, they are likely on their second or third-generation recording system. First, to move from analog to IP. Second time to avoid the issues they encountered with buying a box for their first IP foray, rather than a ‘solution’. So we see the opportunity to continue to educate both the integrator and the end customer on deploying a state-of-the-art solution (rather than just a box for his video surveillance project) complete with warranty and unsurpassed experience.

SecurityHive: What was BCDVideo’s first project and what has been your largest project to date?
Burgess: I wish I could share more but we have a fair number of Non-Disclosure Agreements in place, especially considering the security market we are in. So let’s just say we are recording IP video on six continents, 33 countries, in just about every vertical market imaginable, and that we have experience in recording over 6,000 cameras on a single site. However, our largest project will be our next order. We really do treat them all the same.

SecurityHive: What have you learned from these projects that forced you to realize that there was more to “getting it right” than just plugging in network cables?
Burgess: It really all comes down to consistency. That really was how we entered this market. We had our stumbles along the way. I think this is where our Fortune 500 background came into play. Our staff has always been trained to service a Fortune 500 customer, although we left the IT world years ago.

All we did was switch that service pipe from Fortune 500 customers to the security integrators, who are our actual end customer. Consistency and trust delivers repeat business. This defines who you are to the customer – both your product and your people.

The integrator owns that project for a number of yours. He has got to trust us and know that the vendor stands behind him and his project. This is where we excel and succeed.

SecurityHive: What do you tell organizations that are looking to implement a physical security / video surveillance infrastructure that maybe they didn’t understand or had not considered that really opens their eyes to “doing it the right way?”
Burgess: It’s a daily challenge. So much is based upon price. Not performance. And certainly a one-time upfront price without consideration of what it will do to your profits as you attempt to support the unit over the three to five years of the project. No secret that we build our platform from an HP foundation. Granted, it is totally remanufactured for video and nothing like off-the-shelf product.

By making the decision to build off of HP versus white box or even DELL, we knew that we would face price competition against other boxes on the market. Yet, that is our competition. Interesting how none of them choose to compete against us on performance. Luckily, our integrator partners have trust and confidence in our solution and support and see the value of not having to continually send out a truck to service the system. We contend that we are the lowest cost solution over the lifespan of both the project and the product. You must look at the BIG picture in order to do it the right way.

SecurityHive: You have a very close relationship with HP. Can you tell us why this relationship is so important and how does -or does not- allow you to work with other manufacturers?
Burgess: HP has been vital to our business for countless reasons. We are intimately embedded within their company so it makes the partnership that much more relevant than simply being just a vendor to us.

I am a member of their OEM Customer Advisory Board, so not only do I have input into their program, I am also privy to high end go-to-market strategies.

HP has supported BCDVideo from the onset and we work closely with world class professionals assigned to our business model. They have given us the foundation to grow our business globally —we have a number of projects that are multi-national— and they support us in all of our installations around the world.

Therefore, we are extremely loyal to HP, and we do also work with other manufacturers —none that directly competes within HP’s existing product line— with NetApp being one example.

If anything in those projects require SAN storage, we use a solution based upon NetApp, to whom we are also a global OEM. But those builds are still utilizing HP front-end engines to drive the solutions, some as high as 2500Mbits/second of bandwidth.

This HP relationship has enabled us to work in conjunction with other manufactures to complete the necessary surveillance recording solutions.

SecurityHive: BCDVideo has been in business primarily as an integrator but it seems that BCDVideo is starting to OEM and bring to market specific products under the BCDVideo name and even doing so with regional focus around the world. Can you tell us where you see the evolution of BCDVideo as a unique product provider?
Burgess: Actually, not quite the case. We never were an integrator and we have never sold to an end user in this market. We started as a system builder for this market in late 2008 and by early 2009 we had signed contracts with two national/global integrators.

In 2010, HP named us as their Global OEM for Video Storage and things pretty much took off from there. Much has evolved for us over the last five years, to be sure. As much as it has been an education process for the customers, it has been for us as well. We really are unique to the market because we are more than a storage vendor – we are a video infrastructure vendor.

First and foremost, we understand the market, the technology needed for the market, the variances in VMS applications, and their effect on how storage is written.

Then there is the network and understanding multicast versus unicast and what the pipe can handle in regard to server/storage bandwidth through the network.

Also, the client workstations. Technology has totally changed those over the years. The days of a PC and monitor are over, especially if you want GPU-Accelerate Video Encoding.

People tend to forget that the video view is the end customer’s view of surveillance. Whatever you have racked and stacked means little if the camera views are fuzzy or pixelated.

But more than anything, we understand the integrator and what he is looking for. We have employees who have integrator backgrounds. Everything we have within and around our systems has been to benefit the integrator – our guarantee storage/bandwidth calculations, our SMARTcontrol mission control software within our servers, our support, even our builds.

We offer a substantial, wide-reaching product line that allows the integrators to use a BCDVideo solution regardless of size or scope without the pitfalls and pratfalls of other boxes.

As we continue to deepen our relationships with the local and global integrators, VMS, and camera manufacturers, as well as the A&E consulting firms, we will continue to expand our brand.

SecurityHive: One of the “assets” of a company is the institutional knowledge that is gained over the years being in the market. What do you see as some of the institutional knowledge assets that BCDVideo has garnered that separates it from the competition?
Burgess: Having a global partner like HP certainly is huge. They are proactive within the relationship. But everything really goes back to our core competencies from when we started working with the Fortune 500’s.

It gave us an advantage when we came into this market and we will always be a service company first, regardless of how many millions of dollars of hardware we sell. The integrators have come to expect our fast response times and in many ways, we have not only raised the bar on competitors, but also on ourselves. We have to bring it every day – and we do.

SecurityHive: We are starting to see more and more mergers and acquisitions
—Dean Drako of Eagle Eye Networks just acquiring Brivo recently— what does BCDVideo expect the market to look like in a couple of years and how will BCDVideo fit into that market?
Burgess: Dean’s done very, very well. Back to his Barracuda days and having Michael Dell invest in your company is never a bad thing.

Brivo now gives him cloud for access control as well. Makes a lot of sense. As far as we are concerned, he is the king of the cloud market. He will own the hosted video market; he may already.

But we do view cloud differently, likely different than the rest of the market. Especially when you are dealing with tens of 100s of terabytes of storage.

We see the value in “on premises” storage, especially for at least 60 days. Not sure you want to trust real time storage to your Internet provider’s connection.

As much as the cloud could be a great solution for the retail and home market, there are 6TB storage systems with decent throughput out there for under $1000, so I’m not certain what the cloud is saving you once the box is installed.

But we do see its value as a replacement for tape on long time archival storage. And many of the projects are now looking for long time archival; some of the Middle East countries have it as a law. On the other side, the Edward Snowden/NSA news has had some corporations question the safety of their video data in cyberspace, let alone their company IT information.

But what Dean’s deal does show is that there continues to be outside money pouring into this marketplace. It is healthy for the market and it will continue to inspire and reward innovation.

SecurityHive: As we see the transition of the corporate security team shift from the facilities staff to the IT department, what is your experience with the level of sophistication of today’s physical security teams and IT teams and how are these two teams coalescing?
Burgess: In some cases, it is survival of the fittest. Since 2008 and the housing market crash, which had a severe impact on all of corporate America, there has been far less IT budget, yet an increase in facilities budget, i.e., security.

Many IT managers saw that as a threat to job security and decided to embrace it rather than ignore it. On the downside, today a number of the IT managers still don’t understand the nuances of the technology, and try to use their standard DELL\HP data servers for video applications, sometimes in a virtualized environment.

It becomes quite territorial at that point, compounded by the fact that egos get in the way. We ran into that exact scenario at a large school district in Texas last year. After they had spent an additional $350,000 trying to make their initial million dollar investment “work” under the direction of their IT team, they finally called in a security integrator to replace the equipment with our solution, working flawlessly over the past year. Some lessons are more expensive than others.

These days, more companies and organizations employ both a Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer or Chief Technology Office as peers reporting up to the CEO. This keeps a better balance within the company and the comfort zone of having the right person working within his or her level of expertise, especially in regard to all aspects of security.

SecurityHive: It appears from the outside that BCDVideo has had some tremendous growth over just the past three or four years. What do you attribute that to?
Burgess: Happy to report that it appears that way from the inside as well! We’ve really just stuck to the plan. We knew we would have hiccups along the way, but those were healthy for our learning curve. In addition, establishing ourselves early on with the security integrators gave us the confidence that we had a solid solution and mission plan. We have branded ourselves pretty well, although we still have work to do. But it really comes down to a loyal customer base who trust BCDVideo – not just the products, but as a whole solution provider. Our products, our people, our service, and our commitment. That’s what truly drives us. It’s exciting and fun!

SecurityHive: Your crystal ball might be a bit more in focus than the average person. What do you see for the physical security / video surveillance market in three to five years and how do you see BCDVideo fitting in with those potential technology advances/changes?
Burgess: We see more consolidation ahead, not only in mergers & acquisitions, but also in collaboration and partnerships, with or without monetary investment. Safe to say, security is here to stay. Glad that the newer technologies are allowing the video data to be used proactively as business intelligence (BI), rather than catastrophe-driven.

As we continue our global presence, we will continue to find new markets for our solution. We have developed technological solutions and have forged relationships that will still be viable well into the next decade. We intend not to simply fit in with technology advances, but to be a force that drives them. Stay Tuned!

Source: bcdvideo.com