business news Trend breaking acquisition Dean Drako Acquires Brivo for $50 Million Brivo, provider of cloud-based physical access control, has been wholly acquired for $50 million by dean drako, entrepreneur, president and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks. As Brivo’s owner, Drako will serve as the company’s chairman, and Steve Van Till, Brivo’s president and CEO, will continue leading the company. Brivo’s cloud-based access control system currently services over 6 million users and over 100,000 access points, providing featurerich access control for small and medium businesses, along with scalability and centralised management for global enterprises. “My goal was to acquire the physical security industry’s best access control system,” said Dean Drako. “Brivo’s true cloud architecture and open API approach put it a generation ahead of other access control systems. Cloud solutions provide exceptional benefits and Brivo is clearly the market and technology leader. Brivo is also committed to strong, long-standing relationships with its channel partners, which I believe is the best strategy for delivering extremely high customer satisfaction.” Successful entrepreneur Dean Drako is a parallel entrepreneur, investor, and engineer. In addition to his role as owner and chairman of Brivo, Drako is founder, president and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks, delivering the first on-demand cloud based security and operations video management system (VMS) with both cloud and on-premise recording. Prior to forming Eagle Eye Networks, Drako was founder, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, where he developed the IT security industry’s first spam filter appliance. From Barracuda’s inception in 2003 through 2012, Drako grew the company to be an IT security industry leader, with more than $200 million in annual sales and 150,000 customers. Accelerate the cloud technology shift With the acquisition of Brivo, Drako will apply the strategy and execution processes he used at his other successful companies, including Barracuda Networks, to leverage Brivo’s technology lead and growth trajectory. In particular, Drako sees the opportunity to accelerate the cloud technology shift already underway in the physical security industry by combining Brivo’s cloud access control with his cloud video surveillance company, Eagle Eye Networks. Because Brivo and Eagle Eye are both cloud-based, the combined solution uniquely offers flexible deployment, with scalability and cyber-secure remote management. “We are extremely excited that Dean Drako has acquired Brivo and is serving as chairman. In addition to Dean’s experience founding and leading Barracuda Networks to be a multi-billion dollar company, he has grown his latest company, Eagle Eye Networks, to be the technology leader in cloud video surveillance,” said Steve Van Till, president & CEO, Brivo. “We both share the vision of delivering the tremendous advantages of cloud-based systems to our customers.” A trend breaking acqusition The IHS research analysts, Blaze Kozak, comments also on the the purchase of Brivo by Mr. Drako. ”This is yet another example of the deepening integration between access control and video. Although the entities will remain separate, the level of integration and offering will likely escalate. And, what makes this a unique case is that the owner of a cloudbased video provider is expanding into cloud-based access control. While we have seen acquisitions of providers of cloud-services, e.g. Kaba and Keyscan and Avigilon with Redcloud, this is a first”, states Kozak. Hikvision claims top position in World video surveillance Hangzhou, China According to the latest report from business information provider IHS Inc., Hikvision has strengthened its position as the world’s leading CCTV and video surveillance equipment company – it is the fourth year in a row that Hikvision has topped the list. The company’s dominant 16.3% total market share in terms of revenue is up by more than 50% compared with the previous year and more than double its 8% market share of just two years ago. Even more significantly, Hikvision has claimed the number one position in every individual equipment category, making up 18.9% of the global network security camera market, increased by 5.9 percentage points of revenue market share compared with last year’s number two position (13%) in this fast-growing camera sector. The report also indicates the company’s efforts in overseas markets over the years by ranking it as number two in the CCTV and video surveillance equipment category in the EMEA market, achieving a 9.2% market share. “We are very pleased to see Hikvision’s rankings in CCTV and video surveillance equipment. This is an attribute to our continuous R&D innovation and investment. Importantly, we move forward with the rapid developing market trends of IP surveillance which benefits us with these great achievements in IP product segments.” says Cynthia Ho, Vice President at Hikvision. “We appreciate our customers’ and partners’ support and trust in Hikvision. Looking forward, we will continue to seize every opportunity to meet the market need and keep investing in R&D, offering more benefits and service to our customers.” Hikvision has strengthened its position as the world’s leading CCTV and video surveillance equipment company. 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