Lenel President Is Out (Now At ACRE)

I've had multiple sources told me that Hikvision is going to manufacturer Access Control products and we all saw that they did to the video surveillance market.

Additionally, like you said, companies pressured on the video side are now pushing heavily on their access control products.  Increased supply with the same market demand usually means lower prices.

Perhaps Lenel's failed bid for Avigilon caused the shakeup/exit.  (just a theory).  Maybe the new guy is better suited to close the deal.

It makes too much sense for these two to team up.  

Lenel = no viable VMS.  terrible support.

Avigilon  = great at both.  no viable access control, Lenel huge market share.

As a competitor of both, I don't welcome it.  :)

There is another possibility that hasn't been mentioned here.  This new guy has no experience in the industry but is good at cutting costs it seems.  What value does this have for Lenel really?  None, future wise.  In other words, this guy knows how to make companies look good on paper.  UTC might be looking to sell.  Just trying to look at it from all angles.

Something else came to mind.  Lenel just starting re-selling Milestone. Could there be a Canon trifecta in the near future?

I have been using Lenel since 2001. There was a time, before Lenel was sold to UTC, when the software quality and innovation were the top of the market. The software quality and especially the software innovation have been on a downward slide for a while.

Management abandoned the government by not focusing the resources or efforts to maintain a product that was usually a step ahead of the competition.

Management has continued to allow the air of arrogance without having the product that raises them above the competition. Though, having the quality of the product slide is a lot easier than adopting an air of unpretentiousness.

So, where has Lenel lagged? They have been slow to move to the browser interface and cloud-based functionality. They have tried, repeatedly, to be a bigger player in the video market and failed - failed to have a good video product, failed to maintain the video product they had. They continue to make it difficult to integrate other products with OnGuard.  

The browser interface is a huge issue. Making it easy for the casual user, sometimes administrator, viewer of 1 or 2 cameras, to log in and use the system has been a failure. Yes, there may need to be a full blown client for the power user; but the boss is often a casual user and making it easy for the boss is important.

Do we need cloud-based functionality? Really? Well, yes. We have moved past the  idea of having servers in the control room or command center. All the servers are in the data center. So, having the functionality that allows the servers to be in the data center is important. Whether the data center is across the hall, across the campus, across town, or across the country should not matter.

So, will UTC expend the effort and resources to bring Lenel back to the top? That is a question of short term gains vs long term viability. If the effort is not made, the attrition will continue. It does not make sense to continue to pay more for a product that does not provide more than the competition. As the software of the competitors gets better, the downward trend will continue to snowball unless powerful moves are made to reverse the trend.

Momentum is always in the direction you are moving. It takes twice as much effort to reverse momentum. It took quite an effort by UTC to reverse the market leadership of Lenel. It will take quite an effort by UTC to reverse course, start in the right direction, and regain ground on the competition.  

Its hard to Watch greed consume a product that WAS clearly a top tier in its industry...Customer and Integrator Partners drive the demand and the Value of your product.  Both need to be solid in order to stay on top....LENEL didn't just lose one of those key factors they turned their back on both....Odd business choices on their part to say the least.