Why Did Apple And Google Choose Arecont?

I'd point out as well, that just because you're two of the largest consumer technology names on the planet, doesn't mean you know IP cameras or surveillance in general (although there's probably a lot of knowledge residing in the trenches). Arecont's sales department may not have even come into play - more likely, it's a combination of standard, everyday-type corporate decision makers coupled with an integrator's whiz-bang sales pitch.

Touring the company made me realize that every element in their campus is done perfectly and is in sync with everything they do. You can see that these giants take every action very seriously and it looks like all is sync with everything else they do. I am not sure if technology companies like these care for marketing when researching vendors. I think they choose based on what they are known for. They are company's that are not quick to decide. They must have found something in arecont that they can relate too. If not, they wouldn't have chosen it. I don't sell that many arecont cameras so I really can't tell the model. They also don't let people take pictures inside. Apple security was very tight compared to google. The sense is that everyone feels very secure in both campuses.

One thing also holds true, apple would not have a windows based platform. Which apple platforms could handle such a system?

I have no knowledge of why either choose Arecont, however I would say typically what is in stalled is what is recommended by the chosen integrator. There are lots of products out there and end users can't test or even get knowledge of every product out there.

For example two years ago we started putting in a new ATM model that was specifically designed to be an ADA compliant model. However after design the manufacture of the ATM realized they did not keep an ATM face camera mounting location in mind when they designed the unit. So as an after thought they choose a spot that was terrible, with limited space on the inside and the only cameras that would fit were board cameras. The mounting location was so low that unless you were a child, in a wheel chair or a short person (little person), the camera would film your waste. So they decided to fix the problem by making the problem even worse by changing the clear plastic lenses with a fish eye piece. Short of a board camera I have only found one camera that will fit and even then the picture still stinks. This non board camera I never heard of before. But my integrator researched for months and came back to me with hey use this camera. the manufacture even has a model number that incorporates the name of this ATM. This specific camera has been factory focused for this ATM. So I bought two one with factory focusing and one without. The only difference I saw was in price. The factory focusing was a little more expensive. But still required lots of on site adjustments to maximize the terrible picture for a slightly better than terrible picture.

Again I think they probable did little to choose who they used other than to pick an integrator and this integrator specified Arecont.

As far as U.S. made. I would bet this played little into the decision. Look at all of Apples products. They are not made in the U.S. If they cared about made in the U.S. they would make their products here.

Having seen a copy of the PO for the cameras that ended up at Google, I can attest the cameras were sold via a national distributor to a large national integrator, Arecont respected the channel. But when you purchase 5000 2MP cameras in a single order, you get a great price. That being said, I am aware of another large tech firm a little north of google and apple that went to Arecont an attempted to purchase directly, Arecont declined but one of their competitors did not. In all three cases mfg personnel maintained relationships with the end users.

Interesting ideas folks. I'm answering from the perspective of a client securing bids on a project roughly 1/3 the size of those two and I find the answer to be a little less technical. Security gets categorically placed into a non-revenue center decision making process. The executive management of these firms does not view security as a profit center, rather a necessary expense to combat intellectual property concerns. Viewing the department as such, decisions will always skew towards cost basis as opposed to long term quality of evidence produced by the investment and long term cost of ownership.

To avoid this, security professionals have to find some form of ROI or ROA metric with which to justify their decision to go with a higher quality product (inferring here that they could in fact do better than Arecont). Example might be shipment verification or package tracking, perhaps even tie in to Kronos for payroll tracking of hourly employees. Profit is a two figure equation, Revenue minus costs. Security cannot generally affect revenue, but often can show cost reduction through the incorporation of security technology into operations and its use as an efficiency tool.

I was a decision maker at a company (mentioned above) that went to Arecont around 2008 (along with Exacq). I can tell you that the cost was a major factor, so was the input from our integrator. We did not have the choices available today, nor the knowledge we have today. We were moving from analog to IP, it was all new to us. We liked the H.264 compression, the lenses worked well and there was a full line of options. Integration was simple and the results were great.

We continued to use Arecont based on our experience. Simply put, the images captured were great in comparison to what we were used to with analog cameras and we experienced no failures. I am no longer with said company, but they are still the camera of choice today.

I use Sony at my current employer, but would not be opposed to using Arecont again. With that said, I have not been a fan of their 180 and 360 cameras. Mostly because I use the cams for post incident investigations, so I don't often go for big sweeping areas. I generally focus in ingress and egress in buildings and parking lots.

Google VMS = DVTel