The Next Failure in Wireless Video Surveillance: $18 Million Funding

John...I agree with your comment about the usefulness of Siklu for multiple camera backhauling. We had a challenging design last year that forced us to include about a dozen radios, and Siklu worked perfectly. The very narrow footprint at their higher frequencies greatly aided in solving our location and aiming issues. We also needed the ability to encrypt the links. The customer had many 1080p streams and was concererned about hacking, and the distances between buildings was reasonable. Siklu may not be required for single device llinks, but the race for higher megapixel cameras, coupled with increasing concerns regarding attacks, may make Siklu more appropriate than in the past. Additionally, the higher cost may not be as important in larger projects.

As an aside, I saw camera manufacturers using Siklu inside the Sands Convention Center at ISC West to distribute signals throughout the hall.

(Disclosure - I am Director of Business Development & Sales for Video Surveillance & Security at Siklu)

John,

Although I respect your opinion, we are seeing a significant increase in demand for our products from the video surveillance market, particularly for the need of an uncongested and interference free wireless solution for dense urban areas where integrators are often experiencing difficulties with implementing sub-6GHz systems. Furthermore, we see a need for higher throughput as the demand for capacity increases from higher megapixel cameras. This is why we entered this market in the first place.

I do want to correct one item in your report. Our radios can achieve distances of up to approximately 2 miles or 3km (depending on the model), not 1km as per your report.

I used to work for Fluidmesh. Hundreds of projects, never found an area that was oversaturated, per se. You just need to look a little harder.

As far as line of sight and penetration goes, it's just simple physics. Wavelength is, quite litterally, the length of the wave from peak to peak or valley to valley. A wave will punch through material about 40% of the thickness of the wavelength before it gets too attemuated to continue. 900 mHz is hundreds of feet from peak to peak - you can punch throuh a lot. 5.4 GHz is a little smaller than a baseball, a little bigger than a golf ball. You might punch through drywall, if you hit it straight. 70 Ghz is about a millimeter. You'll do well to punch through a piece of paper.

As far as bandwidth goes, wireless is often used to backhaul from a remote facility. 25 cameras in the building across campus, etc. Most mesh radios are half-duplex, and there is overhead, so on the best day, you're going to get 60Mb/s throughput. It's not overley difficult to overwhelm a sub-6 radio in a point to point.

These guys are not competing with Fluidmesh, they're competing with Dragonwave, etc. $5k is pretty competitive in this space. They will do well to partner up with the Fluidmesh's of the world, as their products are complimentary.

John and IPVM Tribe,

Great post. My name is Cosimo Malesci and I am Fluidmesh Co-Founder and VP of Sales. I wanted to share my two cents on this topic as I think it is very interesting and very close to me.

As John pointed out, the main issue that prevents the sustainability of VC investments in the wireless video surveillance space is related to market size. The market is a lot smaller than what most people believe it to be. The second issue is the buying process. Most of the largest jobs are government money with a sales cycle longer than 12-18 months. As a consequence, there is no exponential growth and there is no 'tornado' thus ruling out VC money as a sustainable funding mechanism. The returns are just not there.

That said, you can still run a very successful and profitable company in the space, you just need to have the right expectations. We funded Fluidmesh in 2005 bootstrapping the company and managed to make it profitable in 3 years. In the past 10 years we have managed to expand our sales force to every continent and keep double-digit growth year after year. At this point we are a bit more than 50 people between Chicago, NYC, Milan, Lima, and Taiwan. In North America in 2015 we are on track to do roughly 42% growth. We have launched a new product line in 2015 and we are scheduled to release a newer generation radio in early 2016, which will be able to push north of 500 mbps at 5 GHz. So things are going really well for us and we are gaining good traction. Because we started with a very small investment and funded our own growth, we don't have any major capital to return or any target growth to reach. We focus on what makes sense, what our customers need, and what the market can sustain. This year we have seen momentum from the disappearance of some of the other VC backed wireless vendors in the space. In addition, our entry-level PTP Radio Kit “Ponte” has been very well received given the aggressive price point and the pre and post sale support provided.

Siklu has an interesting product and Alex is a good friend so we wish them best of luck in this new roll out hoping they have done their homework and that they will be able to find growth in this and other markets and keep their investors happy.

Go Wireless!

Cosimo

John,

Looking at Siklus' webpage, they seem to aim several markets besides Security. The question would be how their technology will stand "against" up coming standards like WiGi ( IEEE 802.11ad) . Customers don't want to get "locked" on propietary technologies.