This is our Christmas issue and can I be one of the first to wish you a very happy Christmas. I hope you have a great holiday and get to see all your friends and family, especially as we were not allowed to do that last year.
How has your year been? We managed to squash all our Security TWENTY events into the back half of the year and caught up after coming out of lockdown. Let’s hope we never have to go through that again. Not sure you managed to get to our last event of the year which was at Twickenham Stadium the home of English rugby. We decided to try something new at the charity dinner and ran a street food type night in their Gate venue.
I was a little concerned that this would make the selling of raffle tickets somewhat difficult as everyone was just mingling and networking, however I am delighted to say that we raised just over £2600 for the Royal British Legion that Andy Cassidy does work for in his spare time. This was helped by Tony Gleason at Bournemouth who gave us a signed rugby ball that he had from the year 2000. The Cook Cup was again contested over a single match and for the first time saw England and Australia meet as reigning champions of their respective hemispheres. The match was played at Twickenham, and England won 22–19 to win the Cook Cup for the first time. Of those England players 13 went on to win the Rugby World Cup in 2003. The ball has been signed by the team and came with the match programme. Daniel Frith of DTS was the proud winner of the ball so thank you specifically to Tone and Dan and to everyone that contributed on the night.
Lots of changes over the year which I have been bringing you each month, let’s talk about what has happened this month. Not in any order, here we go:
New positions
Firstly; Mark Massie has left Fortus and joined Dahua as the Sales and Marketing Director. Now you may not know but Mark has been in the industry since 1989 when he started with Sensormatic, in sales of course, as Mark was born to sell and he does that so well hence his new post. I remember following Mark into Imigix based in Wales where he had spent two years selling an empty black box! Empty because the company failed to get the product ready, nonetheless Mark still sold loads of those boxes. Good luck Mark.
Dave Tate is leaving ADI after 11 years to go and become the new Sales Director for Videcon, working alongside Andy Croston of course. I have known Dave for many many years, first meeting him on a ‘plane to travel to Pelco’s offices in California, now that was a trip we took way back in the early 2000s. I know he will do well as no one has a bad word to say about him.
Qognify have appointed Nigel Austin as UK and Ireland Channel Sales Manager. Based in the UK, Nigel has more than 30 years of experience in the electronic security sector. He has managed operational and sales teams in the public and private sectors. He joins from Chubb Fire & Security UK where he was Business Development Manager – National Accounts. Earlier he held senior sales, management and business development positions at Honeywell, Norbain, Dahua Technology and Samsung (now Hanwha Techwin).
Did I mention Hanwha? Scott Davis has joined the company as sales manager for UK and Ireland. I first met Scott at Gardiners in Rochdale where he lives; of course that was also back in the early 2000s.
Paul Drawbridge has left QCIC and joined LenelS2 as their Enterprise Executive. A fancy title Paul; but Paul is this month’s gamekeeper turned poacher. But to be fair as he was at Tyco before he was a poacher that turned game keeper so to speak in other words he’s back on the manufacturing side. In fact more new news about LenelS2: Traka announced it has received LenelS2 factory certification for Onguard as a LenelS2 OpenAccess Alliance Program (OAAP) partner. Traka’s key and asset management products interface with the OnGuard control system and provides single-credential access to property secured by Traka.
Russell Baker joins Maxxess as Business Development & Account Manager for the UK and Ireland. Russell will be based out of the company’s European head office in Bracknell. You may have seen him as I did at ST21 London at Twickenham the other day.
Promotions
Gareth Williams, pictured, at Oprema has been promoted to Managing Director. Gareth has been working side-by-side with Matthew Epps, current Managing Director to allow a smooth transition of the business and continuity of leadership. Gareth has over 20 years of industry experience, six as Sales Director at Oprema. Also a little birdie tells me that Shirley Phillips-Knight who has been at Axis communications for almost a year now has been promoted to run the UK sales now; well done Shirley. Of course you will remember that Shirley spent nearly 24 years at Norbain. Damien Marsh has been promoted at QCIC to Associate Director; he told me: “FYI we have merged DA into the QCIC brand it’s all exciting stuff.”
Acquisitions
Comelit have bought PAC GDX – this is a significant purchase so I have interviewed their MD Francesca all about it so turn to page 52 of the December print magazine.
Motorola Solutions announced it has acquired Envysion, Inc., a provider of enterprise video security and business analytics products for quick-service restaurants and retail. Envysion’s cloud-based solution integrates video systems with sales data to identify potentially fraudulent transactions and highlight sales patterns and in-store activity – without the need to monitor hours of video footage.
Finally may I wish you all a great Christmas once again, and of course a very Happy New year. See you in 2022 at one of our ST22 events maybe?
