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Originally published on 04/08/2002
Walking into an elevator with an especially good friend, the first thing we both did, almost without thinking, was scan the ceiling for cameras. The second thing we did is none of your business.
Fast Facts:
IndigoVision
www.indigovision.com |
| CEO |
Oliver Vellacott. Last job: Product manager VLSI Vision Limited |
| HQ |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Employees |
120 |
| Market |
Digital video software and chips |
| Funding |
$70M in four rounds. Went public on London Stock Exchange in August 2000 (IND.L) |
| Profitable |
No; projected for FY 2004 |
But video surveillance is a huge business, and it's getting huger quickly, fueled by two factors. The first is sociopolitical: thanks to September 11 in the U.S., and long-standing terrorism threats elsewhere, video cameras increasingly monitor public places. The second is technological: traditional video cameras and cables are being made obsolete by much less expensive, networked digital video systems. Likewise, it's cheaper and easier to distribute and store digital video data.
Improving technology and an active customer base makes for nice business, and many companies, like IndigoVision, are ready to profit from this. IndigoVision makes software and designs chips that go into networked surveillance cameras, video storage and distribution servers, and monitoring applications. Licensing revenue comes from each of these sources, but in a discussion with CEO Oliver Vellacott, we rolled up everything into revenues of about $100 for each camera sold.
Over time, cost reductions across all digital surveillance products will push this per-camera income to under $15, Oliver projects. However, he thinks the number of cameras sold per year will increase a hundredfold from today's 5 million, driven by lower hardware, installation, and management costs.
As the technology develops, more processing (such as face recognition) will be pushed out to the cameras themselves, increasing the need for management tools to handle networks of camera-resident applications and databases. And even with good data compression, increasing surveillance will tax existing networks. Demand could grow for routers to handle this traffic on the public Internet, and will certainly grow for the installation of private networks.
We may not like being watched, but people at networking companies will certainly like the effects on their businesses.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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