Costa Boukouvalas, Chief Executive Officer at Agility Grid, an IP surveillance solutions provider, discusses the company’s focus in partnering with leading security vendors

 

How do you help customers take advantage of latest solutions without undermining their existing IP surveillance investment?

There has been an increasing focus on video analytics capabilities to be able to more proactively use the data being captured. These new technologies provide much earlier detection of abnormal behavior and security issues. All of our products, add-ons and plug-in modules have been designed to easily integrate into existing platforms, enhance your existing IP surveillance system and improve its performance and ROI. Big data analysis is also driving a lot of purchase decisions – it is one thing to record video images for a specific period of time, but what can end customers learn from this data and how can this data analysis drive performance changes within their companies.

Who are the vendors you partner with for IP surveillance?

We pride ourselves in providing the most technologically advanced solutions with a proven track record of performance under a one stop shop theme for video surveillance solutions. All performance is benchmarked and we are the first company in the industry to offer KPI’s for Video Surveillance. In terms of hardware we partner with Rasilient, a US international manufacturer of award winning servers, storage and workstations and we work with Sony, Abus and Axis cameras depending on the requirement. We also have a range of best-of-breed video analytics software including facial recognition, abnormal behavior detection, suspect tracking and automatic number plate detection and in many cases, we are the exclusive partner for the Middle East and Africa region. These have all been custom designed to fully integrate with each other as well as the VMS platform. For VMS we work closely with Milestone and are an official distributor worldwide.

Icetana and Viakoo are two of the brands you are associated with- discuss demand for such niche tools in IP surveillance deployments in the region?

These products provide early warning systems for video surveillance. Icetana looks at patterns of behavior within your environment to quickly detect abnormal behavior. It greatly assists Management of large private and public areas such as Public Transport, large office buildings, hotels and shopping malls, to mitigate risks. Viakoo is a proactive monitoring tool that monitors every frame that travels from the camera, through the switch infrastructure, via the cables, server and all the way through to the hard disk. This helps to quickly diagnose hardware and software performance issues, so you can act on them before they become serious or cause a failure. Niche products such as iCetana require extensive eduction at both the end user and consultant level to fully help to explain the difference and potential savings, that these solutions can provide. To this end, we are focussing more and more on end users and consultants via direct early engagement and this is supported with our fully certified professional services team that can help with solution design, training, implementation, integration and consulting services.

Elaborate on your key territories of focus as well as key customer segments?

We are based in Dubai and have customers throughout the Middle East and Africa. There is still a lot of growth happening in the UAE and Qatar, particularly with the number of prestigious events coming up in both countries. Due to customer demand, we are currently expanding our reach into South Africa and Morocco to address the wider African market and also into Turkey and Iran. We service a wide range of customers in the Public and Private Sectors including law enforcement, transportation, banks, hotels and retail and education sectors.

Elaborate on your partner reach and market focus in the Middle East?

Our partner network is very important to AgilityGrid and we have over 600 partners across the GCC and Africa region. Our professional services team works hand in hand with our partners to offer services to consultants and end customers during the pre and post sales process as well as ensuring that all our key partners are trained and certified on our products and solutions. We align many of our partners to specific verticals so that we are sure that we are always providing the best solution and delivery of our products to our end customers.