Avigilon Acquired By Motorola Solutions

Well. We all saw that coming.

Just not from Motorola....

I personally don't expect any impact on Avigilon solutions or to their dealers. There are many big names sold to unusual buyers and still going strong.

It is too early for me to decide if it is negative or not.  Neutral for now.

i am having definite flashbacks to the Panasonic push to cross-sell toughbooks and monitors.

It is not quite as disconcerting as some of the potential purchasers mentioned (Schneider, Hik, Dahua) in the past.  I still would be a bit more excited if it was a company with an industry relevant past that may boost one or the others product line - Hanwha for example.  My biggest concern is what this means for any future product development and how soon we will be competing against Motorola radio dealers. If product development stalls for a year Avigilon will die on the vine... the H4A line is aging rapidly, the multi-heads are the last H3 products, and the Pro series has stagnated for a while. 

As long as they leave us alone, keep the same distribution model, and continue to develop the product in a logical manner I could see it being neutral.  Let’s call this the Canon model.

Well, now...

Motorola is finally back in the video business. We sold a ton of it. They use to make the best cameras back in the day (late 60's early 70s). They had their own integrated FSK control, with audio channel as well. What goes around, comes around. It will be pure nostalgia to see that logo on a camera once more.

The big question is commitment. They use to own the 2-way biz, had all first responders. Would seem a natural to get heavy into city surveillance. Time will tell.

Oh, and I am guessing Avigilon's Founder / CEO Alex Fernandes will be stepping down soon enough. Anyone particularly agree / disagree?

I see a couple things coming out of this, first the continuation of National integrators acquiring and leading with their own product lines  - JCI being the most recent example with Tyco / AD / Exacq / SWH

I also foresee them trying to open up VMS relationships to move their camera lines. While the Avigilon VMS is a decent product, it's not truly enterprise level. Fernandes didn't want to integrate / work with anyone else and that ultimately lead to their demise.

IMO Motorola will try to cut into Axis market share on the upper end lines, if the cameras at are able to compete at that level

Don’t know much about Motorola’s offerings. I would assume this could potentially mean more cameras with more robust integrated wireless capabilities. If anything this will be interesting to watch. 

I don't think any of us saw this coming and no amount of aggressive research and speculation could have led us to this conclusion... Reality really is stranger than fiction.

What does this say about the state of the industry as a whole? Is everything bound to be absorbed by conglomerates sooner or later?

I wonder which takeover would have resulted in all positive comments.

having worked for AVO for close to 5 years I am happy so far with the news. I can understand where Motorola is coming from and the future will tell. The rest uttered here is 99% speculation.

And if they need to expand, they can load-up on pre-trained, experienced Avigilon personnel by buying IndigoVision.

Update: Here is the 101-page acquisition agreement between Motorola and Avigilon. Analysis to follow later.

"Losers - Avigilon Dealers

Motorola Solutions focuses on selling their own offerings (e.g., radios most notably) direct to end users, as their website shows here:"

By this simple fact they were aquired how you came to the point all dealers MUST sell radios?

100% about the integration of body cameras to their radios. 

Yeah,...........Ok.   So, lets take something that was really good, working fine, getting better and better every year, had a singular purpose and direction, was well respectedat a global level, employed countless numbers of American citizens, and was considered, at one time and by many in the industry, to be the crown jewel of the CCTV industry.

Lets take that, buy it out by a Mega-Giant, run by the French, based in Paris, and whose core business has nothing to do with Security or CCTV, cut off its R&D, split it up into smaller parts,  close its manufacturing doors in the US, lay off countless number of loyal and in some cases life-time employees, reduce its customer support funding and staff, move at least some of that manufacturing over seas to....where?.......China, and all to quantify something as "important" (comparative to the lives and customers impacted)  as shareholder value?

We should agree to disagree that the whole SE/Pelco experience was a good one for all concerned and to be emulated when and where possible.  The employees of Avigilon are, no doubt as we speak, are listening to someone, somewhere, saying that "Nothing will change and this move is really a good thing for Avigilon and its employees".

Time will tell either way.

Reading thru everything it was said: "even in their announcement, is saying how they are going to directly integrate / offer Avigilon products within their broader portfolio."

The press release said:  

The company holds more than 750 U.S. and international patents.

“This acquisition will bring Avigilon’s advanced video surveillance and analytics platform to the rapidly evolving public safety workflow, while also expanding our portfolio with new products and technologies for commercial customers,” said Greg Brown, chairman and CEO, Motorola Solutions.

Maybe Motorola knows something about the patents and see's the real value hidden in the patent portfolio?

Yes, it was my distinct recollection that Schneider Electric also had a PR division which invested 18-20 minutes producing an announcement-day statement of similar content and with equally dubious results.  Pelco also had many patents.  Even though Avigilon was publicly traded, it was tightly-controlled and operated in a singularly-focused way much like a privately held one.    Like I said before, publicly-traded companies with many divisions function in a fundamentally different way than people realize.  With this merger, Avigilon dealers and, especially employees, are going to absolutely find that it most certainly will NOT BE business as usual.

Ironic is Motorola was acquired by Lenovo. A China based company.

Surprised no one has mentioned this possibility - perhaps Motogilon cameras become much more open with other VMS (actually integrating their analytics into other VMS, rather than relying on limited ONVIF connections).

The software doesn't seem to play at the true enterprise level, and perhaps it's easier / more profitable for Motorola to bring the cameras and analytics into other systems rather than hope for Avigilon software to get to the big time?

This has a particular nostalgia for me, since I was a Printrak employee when (then) Motorola acquired Printrak (primarily for the computer aided dispatch business). More significantly, the "solutions" side of Motorola subsequently acquired Symbol Technologies.

Later, as the ups and downs of the phone side of the business went down, Motorola/Motorola Solutions subsequently spun off many of these acquisitions to concentrate on core businesses. (The fingerprint part of Printrak is now within IDEMIA, while Symbol and other enterprise-related business ended up with Zebra Technologies as Motorola concentrated on its public safety business.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola Solutions redirects Avigilon towards more government sales. It still seems to view the market as (a) police radios, and (b) things that complement police radios.

I'm in the bidding stage of investing approximately $250,000 on an expansion project for a 75 camera system using Avigilon and replacing the head end of a 450 analog camera system with Avigilon. Then the goal is to have all analog cameras replaced with Avigilon IP cameras in five years.

Okay, what would you do? Go with it or look at something else?

Ok, Avigilon dealers, don't aim your pitchforks at me but this is Motorola's CEO on the investor's conference call emphasizing how they are going to use their "large direct sales force that serve enterprises in the commercial markets, so it's got very attractive channel synergies" [emphasis added]. So at least according to their CEO, they are not just going to sell direct for military and government but for commercial as well.

[IPVM Note: Avigilon Employee]

Can we think a little more critically here and be more consistent please?

First of all, no one knows the future of any company 5 years from now.  Who would have seen the almost complete departure of Dedicated Micros?  Or the train-wreck that was to become the current ONSSI post law-suit with Milestone?  Or in another industry - the complete demise of Motorola's cell phone sales in 2007 after being on top prior to that.  There are so many factors that will effect any company 5 years from now that are completely unknown to any of us.

Secondly, please be consistent in comparing apples to apples.  All of the "failed" acquisitions of security technology companies being used as evidence of the certain demise of Avigilon have been by physical security companies (i.e. Tyco, Scheider, etc).  The successful acquisition was done by a non-physical security company (Canon).  Motorola Solutions is not a Physical Security company.  If we are going to compare past acquisition history than this comparison needs to made to Canon and not to any of the others.  

Third - R&D.  Motorola has historically spent over 12% of revenue on R&D each year.  I'm sure that we can all agree that $900M is hardly a small pot of money from which to fund future R&D projects at Avigilon.  Let's remember that Motorola has the largest market share of public safety critical communication in North America and their goal is for Avigilon to also reach the top market share position and they know that will require R&D as well as not only continuing but growing even more in all the areas that have brought Avigilon to where they are today.  

Finally, go-to-market strategy.  Motorola has NOT said they are going to change Avigilon's go-to-market strategy.  They have never said that they will "sell direct" to anyone.  What they have said is that they will use their direct sales channel to bring Avigilon to their current customers.  That is, they have a team of 600 sales people customer facing on a daily basis.  Those 600 people will now be advocating for Avigilon with those customers.  This in no way implies a direct sale to those customers much in the same way that any manufacturer who pitches their product directly to the buyer is not conducting the transaction when that buyer decides to go with their product.  In essence, what just happened was Avigilon got 600 new salespeople who have over 1,000 public safety jurisdictions that they are going to try to introduce Avigilon to.  The result will be Avigilon's existing dealer base receiving gift wrapped sales - not being circumvented.  

Let's be fair in our assessment of this announcement on what is only the 3rd day since any of us became aware of it.  We will all see what the future holds in due time.  But if anything, my opinion is that the competition should be afraid of the money that will be infused into Avigilon's already impressive R&D as well as their increased exposure and that integrators who are currently Avigilon dealers should be excited about the potential for future growth and anyone who is not currently an Avigilon dealer would seriously consider trying to pick them up as a new product in their line.