Dedicated Micros Chairman Mike Newton 3,000+ Word Statement To IPVM

Dedicated Micros founder and Chairman Mike Newton emailed IPVM a 3,000+ word statement in response to questions for a report we were investigating and now have just released, see: UK's Dedicated Micros Claims To Be Back And "Best".

We are publishing Netwon's statement in full below. In his statement, Newton objects to us publishing it but at the end warns that "if you choose to cherry pick and distort these statements in any derogatory manner my response will include publishing this in full or part through a number of sympathetic channels" [emphasis added]. With 3,000+ words, it is hard to represent so many claims, so we feel it is best to publish it here, publicly, in full.

We reach out to companies (Charles reached out to DM repeatedly over weeks) because we are generally interested in what they have to say and try to incorporate their claims and feedback in our reporting.

That does not mean we are going to agree with the subject's claims. For example, Newton alludes to this 2016 post: Dedicated Micros Collapses, CEO Says Shut Up, Debates IPVM. The "Shut Up" in the title is a quote from Newton's own social media posting at that time:

For those that may be aware of the big changes at AD Holdings, and have sent their support by various means, may I express my thanks on behalf of everyone...

For those that have nothing nice to say, the best advice is to just shut .. up.

Generally, my advice would be that if companies believe they are strongly positioned, make the case enthusiastically, clearly, and concisely.

Below is Newton's full 3,000+ word statement to IPVM:

Charles,

Firstly I wish to make clear that we have no desire to engage with your organisation

In my closing statements when responding to the highly abusive article published by IPVM in 2016 I had made our position clear that we would engage no further, although I was heartened at the time by the supportive response from those that actually know the business and myself.

As an organisation you have repeatedly distorted our statements and misrepresented our position.

The classic example being our Closed IP security layer that you falsely and maliciously equated to 'closed protocols' when in fact it was a security management layer independent of the protocols. NetVu Connected provides an additional set of image transmission protocols, in addition to the availability of generic 'open' protocols, delivering significant benefits when used. More on those benefits later.

Clearly as the brand is now making its return in certain markets under the NetVu organisation you seem intent again on creating negative comment.

I can confirm the following statements to avoid you making false and derogatory assumptions and statements about our business. This is a long and detailed note, however I have no desire for you to publish this and it is provided solely to quell any negative positions you may otherwise be choosing to present :

US market Position

We no longer support any direct presence in the US market, however we do have a modest customer base of US customers who wished to continue to use our products, despite the sales and support operation in the US closing down. We have continued to support and supply those customers direct from the UK as we respect the needs of those customers who respect and support ourselves.

A recent quote from a major US correctional institution as a reference for a similar potential user in the UK -

As a loyal customer of NetVu/DedicatedMicros, we have over 370 cameras at our facility, a mix of both analog and digital.

We are currently in process of switching over the facility to the newerDedicatedMicrosdigital cameras using both the 5mp Vandal Dome and 5mp Fisheye cameras with thoughts of adding other types as well. The quality we get from the Uniplex system and the cameras are very clear. I have attached a couple of snapshots of areas that are using the vandal domes where it is very clear.

The Uniplex version we are currently using, is very easy in upgrading storage capacities, where in one area, we may be only using 4TB of storage, and in another, we are using 16TB in a multibank unit. Depending on the number of cameras assigned to the unit, we have seen recording capacities anywhere from 75 days down to 33 days on a full unit (depending on hard drive size).

Using Enterprise Observer is a simpler than using other camera observers, i.e. Bosch, etc. Being able to mix and match areas into a multiplex view is very handy to have.

As for the service and knowledge that DM has given us here, I couldn't ask for any better.

From sales, to tech support, to billing, all have been very prompt and courteous in helping place, pay for, and resolve any issues I might have.

For the foreseeable future, we arededicatedtoDedicatedMicros/NetVu.

When we first re-engaged with this customer his most significant 'complaint' was that although he had used theDedicatedMicrosfor many years, the historical sales process had failed to identify the unique benefits of the core technology and architecture, and what he would lose by switching to more 'conventional' VMS solutions. His distress was that he had invested in more than one alternative from major players and found them lacking by comparison to what he had traditionally enjoyed previously with DM, and if he had been aware of that he would never have wasted his money and switched.

It is our pleasure to continue to support such a customer, and we will continue to do so, however we have no current plans to expand and establish operations in the US market. All the customers we are serving are completely aware of this position.

US Specific Standards

As described above, the US market is a small sector for us, and all of our customers would be considered non residential and appropriate for FCC part 15 products to Class A emissions in accordance with FCC 47 CFR 15.3(h).

To this end we test for European and UK standards, with variances if necessary for FCC 47 part 15 Class A limits. These tests are undertaken both in independent approved test facilities and also within our own in house EMC facility first established well over 30 years ago which offered UKAS certified testing to third parties for many years.

Where we resell OEM hardware with our firmware, and we are fully confident in the declarations from those suppliers and supporting test documents are available we may choose to rely on that as the basis of the SDoC rather than repeat testing, although we do undertake some additional tests on occasion regardless.

We supply SDoC to our customers as part of the import process to the US and other relevant import authorities.

With regards to UL safety standards we have adopted the position that all product now has external power sources, and those are bought in complete with UL approvals and markings from the original supplier.

We typically assess our product under EN62368 where appropriate, however due to the low voltage sources there is typically very little that remains applicable. In the case of Cameras with IR illuminators this creates a minor example where there is an applicable requirement under EN62368 Clause 10, RS1 emitters. Despite the fact that it is quite obvious from some simple maths and a basic understanding of physics that it falls well below the required limit, we still undertook an independent EN62368 assessment with a UKAS certified test lab to fully underwrite those findings and assumptions.

I presume that you are aware that the IEC/EN/UL/CSA 60950–1 has now been replaced with the international IEC 62368-1 standard, although there is the option to formally list under UL/CSA62368 ?

This is again fully disclosed within our import documentation. The modest volumes supplied to the US do not warrant bespoke UL62368 listing, and again our customers are fully aware of the legitimate position that we take. If a customer were to demand an explicit UL listing, then we would decline to supply unless the volumes were to commercially justify the additional expense.

British Manufacturing Status

The primary value in our product is represented in the features and benefits of our superior technology and capabilities. We deliver that product on a wide variety of platforms, from very low cost entry level platforms, up to loading software only on major Enterprise servers.

That software has been built on a core library developed from our first award winning and leading DVST ( Digital Video Storage and Transmission ) systems from 1991, which operated under a seven layer OSI model long before the emergence of the Internet. Your magazine has previously suggested that we only understood analog, and couldn't evolve into the Digital IP age. In fact we had been operating to Internet like protocols long before the emergence of the Internet, and knew the challenges to deliver the same capabilities and ease of use. Our success in achieving that for customers that appreciated the benefits is clearly demonstrated by the continuing feedback such as above.

Later entrants chose to exclusively adopt generic streaming standards such as RTSP, developed for other goals such as movie streaming, and that choice became 'conventional wisdom' as the correct solution.

Our primary error was in not countering misinformation robustly enough, to counter this view. I will fully accept that this happened on my 'watch' however can assert most definitely that it was not due to a lack of imperative from the leadership in the UK.

However the US senior management team in particular were more easily swayed by that 'Conventional Wisdom' and chose not to deliver the direction. You will however note that although we have no direct presence in the US, we afford those retained US customers a level of support and service that I believe at least matches if not exceeds that provided previously, and is received very well by our continuing customers in whichever countries we serve them.

We have continued to develop that software with wholly employed in house software personnel based in the UK rather than contractors, supporting both our bespoke advanced protocols with also generic protocols available if required.

General usage cameras are based on outsourced board sets, and those are assembled either in house here in the UK or under external contractors into typically generic housings. Those suppliers are from a number of countries, and it is certainly quite typical that generic Vandal, Bullet and Turret housing components originate in the Far East, including China.

However it is now some years since we switched away from all Huawei / HiSilicon DSPs for all new designs, and we have instead selected DSPs not originating from mainland China.

There are also more specialised cameras that we manufacture even down to board level in-house in the UK, and on occasions using the ChipWrights CWx DSP that we designed in house specifically for the surveillance market.

I can categorically deny that we source or re-badge any of our products from end manufacturers such as Dahua, Hikvision, Uniview or similar.

The newly launched low cost NVR utilises an OEM board, for which there are a number of variants all looking very similar, and in fact designed to utilise the same metalwork. This includes having differences in architecture and DSP. The basic capability of the board as supplied is inadequate to meet the full needs and capability of a NetVu Connected product, so we apply modifications and upgrades in hardware as necessary to meet these goals.

Hence any conclusions or presumptions made on supply from manufacturers such as Uniview based on appearance would be ill informed and false and complete misrepresentation.

We also supply on NVR hardware manufactured wholly in-house and also OEM sourced products based on Intel architecture.

Where our products are marked 'Manufactured in the UK' this has been independently assessed both at point of import and by our own Chamber of Commerce who oversees our export declarations, meeting internationally applied and accepted manufacturing transformation rules and criteria.

We are 100% confident that out product meets and exceeds the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (2019) requirements, as although some interpretations suggest that HiSilicon DSPs are permitted, we have chosen to design those out of our product. It is again of note that the NetVu Connected Video Surveillance software stack has progressively evolved regardless of the platform, be it Motorola, Hitachi, ChipWrights, Texas Instruments, HiSilicon and now our current DSP supplier.

Mike Newton Involvement

The first attempt to partly divest my interest inDedicatedMicrosdates from 1997, with the intention of retaining a role of Non Exec adviser ongoing as required. At that point the new investors appointed their own Senior Management Team and executive board.

While I believe it is still held that I had a major influence in the development of Video Surveillance Technology in both Analog and emerging Digital solutions, I also have significant business interests outside the Security sector, to which I wished to devote more of my time. This included Aerospace Engineering projects and Motorsport Engineering projects. From 1997 onward I continued to develop those interests, and also continued to pursue specialized applications within the Security sector that the investors in DM explicitly did not seek to pursue.

History has fully demonstrated that DM's year upon year rise faltered at that point, and while I had fully complied with my advisers direction to be 'hands off' post the initial placement, it was those same advisers that implored that I had to re-engage to protect my remaining investment contrary to their initial direction. I regained control of DM in 2001, and the subsequent growth quickly outran the downturn against projections from 1997 and far exceeded those projections into the mid 2000's.

During this time it was my desire to return to a non exec role at the earliest opportunity, and again appointed a full Executive board. Unfortunately despite warnings as a Non Exec and major shareholder, the Senior Management team found themselves ill prepared for the global financial impact in 2008. Shortly after this I was again forced to resume full time executive control as the debt leverage built up by the Senior management team had left the business in a highly precarious position. The bonus options and meteoric success of the previous years unfortunately incentivized certain members of the Senior management Team to cut and run with the accrued bonus, leaving myself to pick up the pieces.

There was then a period of 6 years where all cash generation was wholly absorbed in servicing and repaying the substantial leverage on the business incurred by the SMT. This was ultimately largely achieved in that the major Bank creditor was fully satisfied by the final purchase of very modest remaining debt at the end of 2015. During this entire period no investment in the business was permitted by the Bank, and the only development work that was permitted was using the resources of the existing, albeit reducing personnel.

I then sought a restructuring of the business in early 2016, which was nearly a full success, however defeated by the action of one landlord of the main AD Holdings building, which sadly unraveled the process. Despite this, the restructuring had progressed to the extent that the manufacturing business and virtually all of the resulting trade creditors were already subject to the new business entity. We gave an assurance to those parties that we would seek to fully repay them, and we achieved within a two year period.

There were of course losers in the process, including Landlords, Contingent advisers, a subsidiary pension Scheme ( that was already a problem at the point of acquisition and had been heavily supported over many years ) and other non trade liabilities. However the largest single unpaid creditor was myself.

There is no doubt that the failed restructuring made the recovery process far more difficult, and attracting the appropriate management team under those circumstances, which is clearly one of my weaker skills, was not successful. In the last two years I have again had to assume full time control as losses started to redevelop. The post restructuring recovery was certainly made no easier by gratuitously adverse statements made by such as IPVM.

I have chosen to adopt the title of Chairman, as it is not uncommon for a Chairman / Shareholder to assume operational control while correcting the direction of the business, and at the appropriate time seeking to appoint a new managing Director / CEO. This remain my intention.

I had little desire to re-enter the Video Surveillance market, and was pursuing other sectors that were becoming increasingly successful, including our FireVu visual flame and smoke detection solution. However we had continued as stated above to support a small number of loyal customers and our FireVu product shared the advanced data handling benefits of the Video Surveillance platform. This has included multi thousand camera installations in Middle East hotels, where the technology benefits allowed us to be commercially competitive at a commercial margin against low cost and technically inferior products from Hikvision. This was achieved because of the technology that IPVM has previously decried as irrelevant or wrong.

With current market sentiments, especially those against product designed and supplied by Chinese controlled businesses, it has been appropriate for us to raise the profile again of our activities in Video Surveillance, and target specific products for that wider need. Our focus on this is primarily in the UK and European market, however we will review other territories on a case by case basis.

Our relaunch as a 'Best of British' company with the return of theDedicatedMicrosbrand under NetVu has I believe been both warmly and well received, and we will see where it takes us to again.

For the best part of 15 years now, I have had little if any personal return for the business, and much of the last 10 years actively funded it. I have done this as much to support a great loyal team within the business, and those customers that would miss our benefits. I hope that shared belief will pay off for those in the team that have stuck at it and deserve the future returns. It has been fortunate that my other business ventures have been successful enough to allow me the luxury of continuing to support good people.

The last filed accounts demonstrated that losses had been stemmed and returned to a broadly break even position, despite the adverse conditions through COVID etc. We will shortly be publishing our latest accounts for last year and that will show a clear return to modest profitability. Continued growth with the FireVu and TransVu elements of the business, supported hopefully by a successful return to the general Video Surveillance sector should build on that in the coming years.

In the meantime although typically out of the public eye, my motorsport engineering activities have continued to be highly successful both on and off track. Although now retired at an International racing level, I am also still racing internationally in the same cars in Historic racing, and enjoying the same level of success with two series titles in the last two years, albeit now as the sole driver, rather than a joint effort with highly skilled professional drivers as a Pro-Am pairing.

As stated above I have no desire for this text to be published, and do not seek that. We have sadly lost a great figure recently that admirably demonstrated the ethos of "Never complain, never explain" and that is a position I would seek to emulate.

However if you choose to cherry pick and distort these statements in any derogatory manner my response will include publishing this in full or part through a number of sympathetic channels, and also reviewing legal options if I consider anything as misrepresentation or defamatory. I will be using this to demonstrate that you had clear statements of our position and any distortion or derogatory statements arising to be aggravated and wilful defamation.