Avigilon Expansion Continues - Access Control Sales Push

JH
John Honovich
Mar 16, 2015
IPVM

Wow.

Avigilon's breathless expansion continues.

When they acquired RedCloud access control less than 2 years ago, the company was only doing ~$2 million annual revenue, low even for the meager standards of the access control industry.

Now, Avigilon is pouring in resources.

Avigilon has hired multiple RSMs dedicated to selling just access control, in addition to their existing territory people.

For example, new employee Scott Delk is selling access control in the US midcentral (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Southern Illinois). Delk brings extensive experience previously working at Assa Abloy.

Another example, new employee new employee Norman Gilster is selling access control in the US Rockies (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and southern Idaho).

My goodness, Avigilon will have more salespeople selling access control than OnSSI has in their whole company.

Given the slow pace of the access control industry, this is a fairly major move.

Will it work? I don't know.

The challenge historically is that access control is slow to change but Avigilon is likely betting they can use the power of their core video customer base and loyal channel to drive significant growth in access control.

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GC
Greg Cortina
Mar 16, 2015
They aren't selling access control, they are selling a unified video and access solution in which there are only a few players.
JH
John Honovich
Mar 16, 2015
IPVM

Is that your opinion or are you trying to sum up the Avigilon corporate line?

Because, from their LinkedIn descriptions, they are pretty clearly there to sell access control.

GC
Greg Cortina
Mar 16, 2015
That's it John.... I am canceling .....just kidding. It's my humble opinion.
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Brian Rhodes
Mar 16, 2015
IPVMU Certified

Not to say that applying more resources and manpower to selling access won't yield a positive result for Avigilon, but they aren't going to challenge access incumbents by pulling new business through the dealer channel alone.

Assa and many incumbents have A&E specifiers. The biggest access deals are decided up front during building design.

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MM
Michael Miller
Mar 16, 2015

So far we have been having alot of traction with customers that currently have Mercury based EAC systems and are not happy with their current platforms and/or installers.

AD
Andrew DeMattos
Mar 22, 2015
IPVMU Certified

We are excited to have Norm as a resource. He has a tremendous amount of experience and will add value to all Avigilon dealers in his territory.

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Mark Jones
Mar 22, 2015

I went to school (literally) two weeks ago. Mercury or HID. Easy to install, easy to configure, and they have done their homework in the integration.

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Brian Rhodes
Mar 22, 2015
IPVMU Certified

We are planning to test Avigilon Access in coming weeks.

With that said, there are multiple access platforms that integrate with Mercury and HID (NLSS, Genetec, S2, and multiple others) and those integrations existed as part of Red Cloud, so it's not new or attributable to Avigilon.

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Mark Jones
Mar 23, 2015

I did not mean to infer that it was unique to them. You are right Brian, many platforms do it. That was my point actually. They understood at the time of purchase that Mercury has a huge portion of the market and the re-branding would be more readily accepted. They chose wisely while building their end-to-end solution.

My other point was that because it is Mercury and HID, it took less than a day to get our heads around the product line, but that they have put considerable energy and recources into the video integration. It was smooth and seamless, and to be honest, I did not go to see the access portion. I wrote it huridly and poorly.

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Mar 23, 2015
CS
Claudia Synnatzschke
Mar 23, 2015
IPVMU Certified

I'd be really interested to see an evaluation of their access control product. Does it do burg as well or only access control?

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Mark Jones
Mar 23, 2015

Access only. They parner in some fashion with Gulf Coast, and they can do some Burg. I am not sure Avigilon knows it. They did not seem to know it when I mentioned it. But given that, they are only a heartbeat away from integrating some burg into it.

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