One Innovation at a Time

Industry Professional

One Innovation at a Time

Quality and innovation among key factors for success

Today, Dedicated Micros continues to conceptualize and develop ground breaking video surveillance solutions to meet industry needs.

The company’s global success over the last four decades stems from an approach that puts innovation at its heart. Dedicated Micros develops new products and solutions for the security market, which have always placed value and a measurable return on investment at its core.

Some of its achievements to date illustrate the approach that has guided Mike Newton since his early days as a young entrepreneur—the company was a pioneer of transmission in the early 1990s, and Newton said that Dedicated Micros is credited with the invention of the first commercially available CCTV video multiplexer.

Dedicated Micros’ systems partner with some of the world’s biggest names across a wide range of sectors including retail, banking, education, healthcare, transport and infrastructure.

The company has five different converging video streaming solutions tailored to specific industry needs—analog, HD analog, Hybrid IP, IP camera NVR and Virtual NVR.

In addition, its platform contains inherent benefits that competitors do not have, such as closed IPTV, Multi-Mode, conserves storage by varying the record rate and format as required, enhanced UDP with error correction, multi-streams and transcoding—to name a few.

“It’s all about choice,” Newton said. “We understand that clients have different needs and we are there to meet their requirements. Technologists have to be marketers at heart if they are going to make an impact.”

Dedicated Micros’ innovative spirit, driven by its founder, began in Manchester, England in 1982. Newton was then in his 20s, and right out of college.

“I was an entrepreneur long before it was fashionable in the UK. The Apprentice was a long way off.”

His motivation is quite straightforward.

“I guess I was impatient to make a mark and I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to bring to fruition. It is still true today,” he said

Newton spearheaded the company’s meteoric rise in the CCTV sector using his technical and entrepreneurial skills. During the 1980s and 1990s, Dedicated Micros became a name associated with innovation. Today, Dedicated Micros has a firmly established presence in the United States with offices in Chantilly, Va., a tech base in Orlando, Fla., and staff covering all 50 states. Further afield, it retains a strong presence in Northwest England, a training base near London and offices in continental Europe and Dubai, as well as agents across the globe.

The company continues to invest in new product lines and its in-house development team is constantly looking to bring new solutions to market. Dedicated Micros has a number of sister brands and companies that give a range of solutions. AD Group is the parent company and it includes, besides Dedicated Micros, AD Aerospace, TransVu, RemGuard and FireVu, video-based early fire detection for high value properties.

FireVu is another illustration of the importance of innovation to Newton

The video-based smoke and fire-detection solution has recently launched an industry first: the Multi Detector incorporates thermal detection with smoke and flame detectors. This introduces a host of new benefits such as the capability to alert users to unacceptable rises in temperature before a fire is even ignited. It is expected to be of special interest to manufacturing businesses.

Newton and Dedicated Micros’ COO Pauline Norstrom are the key driving forces behind the company’s diversification and ongoing evolution as a video surveillance technology provider.

To build on its strong equity in the Dedicated Micros brand, it is offering its high-quality, innovative IP video products for fixed fire detection and mobile installations under the updated NetVu Solutions Inc. brand in the U.S. market.

“NetVu Solutions stands for reliability, resilience, interaction and performance across a seamless operating system,” said Norstrom, who also comes from a tech marketing background.

“The NetVu Connected architecture provides a range of benefits to clients including greater reliability, connectivity, resilience, interaction and performance across a seamless operating system.

“Such has been Dedicated Micros’ level of innovation within its market, that a number of patent trolls have tried their luck with legal action over perceived patent infringements regarding their solutions.

However, these cases have been unsuccessful because there has been no substantial grounds upon which to pursue them,” Norstrom said.

Newton says: “Other companies have paid out millions of dollars for patent infringements, we haven’t. It is a bane of many a CTO’s life. It is the downside of being in research and development, but it is where we want to be.”

Newton spends much of his working day with his research and development team, transforming market visions into solutions.

Dedicated Micros’ sister brand FireVu is becoming more prominent. The early fire detection brand is designed for high-value, high-risk assets has been gaining an extensive client list in the United States.

Its clients include such end users as The Metropolitan District in Hartford, Ct., and Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia.

Newton sums up what has kept his firms in business for a technology lifetime:

“At Dedicated Micros we pride ourselves on being different,” he said.

“We were different when we started over 30 years ago, and we are still different now. Different is good. Being different has separated us from our competition. It is about looking to differentiate through innovation to give real and measurable return on investment.

“We are continuing to drive change throughout the business to ensure our new products and system designs are communicated and implemented.”

This article originally appeared in the August 2015 issue of Security Today.

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