SureView Systems Celebrates Significant success in USA

A small Welsh technology company is celebrating after making a significant break through into the rapidly expanding security services industry in the US.

Immix - a sophisticated software system developed by SureView Systems of Swansea is proving an immediate success in the States following its launch last month. The Immix system integrates with over one hundred different types of security systems used to protect property and installations. It provides an extremely cost effective and efficient solution for the growing number of centres whose business it is to remotely monitor and guard properties. Because of the diverse range of security systems on the market, monitoring stations previously had to install the associated software from each manufacturer in order to provide a monitoring system. Staff also need to be trained on each system.

SureView Systems, which is based in Technium Swansea, was helped and supported by the Welsh Assembly - the overseas trade and investment arm of the Welsh Assembly Government to break into the US market, meet key industry contacts, attend trade shows and launch its product.

Ieuan Wyn Jones, Minister for the Economy and Transport, said the success of  SureView was all the more remarkable because of the size of the company. “SureView is a small start up company with just five people on the team yet it has developed a highly innovative product and is already established as a market leader in this rapidly growing sector. “Trading internationally is vital for the company’s future growth and this is where the Assembly Government has been able to help them gain a valuable foothold in the USA which is a market that has huge potential for SureView.”

The Immix system – launched at the Electronic Security Expo (ESX) in Tennessee –  works with all industry standard CCTV recorders, video analytics, access control systems and alarm receivers. Monitoring stations need only install this one system to provide them with a single point of control and operators need only be trained on the one system. The system effectively enables the monitoring centres to take on far more business with the same number of staff.

Director Craig Evans described the launch of Immix as an immediate success – within weeks the system was sold into three large centres and the company is in advanced discussions with another fifteen centres. Each sale represents considerable investment and commitment by the monitoring stations he explained because it involves the migration of systems and staff training on the Immix system. 

Each sale provides SureView with recurring monthly revenue as well as an up front fee: “As these centres grow so our income stream develops and it means we have value in our own business,” Craig said.  “The more successful we are, the more people want to use our system. To maintain our lead we have signed agreements with all the major manufacturers to ensure their future systems can continue to be integrated into our software. “We are in a unique situation of actually being courted by the large manufacturers as it is in their interest to ensure their equipment integrates with Immix.

“The support from IBW has been instrumental in our success – they helped us all the way from our initial participation at a New York trade show in 2006 to test the water. That generated a lot of interest, enabled us to meet key players in the security industry including the president of the security divisions of both Bosch and Honeywell

“It showed there was a market out there for our software so we redoubled our efforts and worked hard to gain the vitally important UL accreditation. We would not have been able to supply to the top monitoring stations in the US without this accreditation and the support and help from IBW made the difference,” said Craig

Not only did SureView gain the highest accreditation possible at the first attempt but the company has been was invited to sit on the USA video standards committee - the governing body that sets the standards for American monitoring stations. The security services industry, which includes the remote monitoring of properties and installations protected by security systems, is a growing market sector which is forecast to become a $66billion industry in the USA alone by 2012.

To give some idea of how important the USA monitoring market is to SureView, a typical UK based remote monitoring stations may have between 600 to 800 customers on their books - in the US the operations are massive, with stations dealing with between 60,000 - 80,000 customers. Operators handle thousands of alerts or alarms a night which all need to be checked out although a high percentage turn out to be false alarms. Having to use an extensive number of different software systems is time consuming, very complex, expensive and ineffective.

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