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ISDS focuses on distribution

ISDS has been active in the security industry for many years, focusing on selling and installing surveillance solutions in specific sectors. The company was probably best known as the exclusive reseller for iSentry, although it included other products in its portfolio.

David Heenan

Recently, David Heenan, MD of ISDS, told Hi-Tech Security Solutions that the company has restructured and will now focus on distribution and supporting its channel partners rather than engaging directly with the end customer. Heenan said current clients of ISDS will still receive the service and support directly from the company, but that new business will be serviced via the channel.

The products ISDS has now included in its portfolio are those which Heenan says add value to the video surveillance market, which is often an under-utilised medium. The biggest news from the company is that it is now an authorised Milestone Systems distributor, a good move for ISDS as most of its products are already integrated into the Milestone platform. With the addition of Milestone, Heenan says the company’s product portfolio has largely been rounded out. (ISDS is engaging a facial recognition specialist software to integrate into its stack.)

ISDS product portfolio

iSentry will remain a key part of ISDS’s offering as it remains the sole distribution partner in the region. iSentry learns about the environment under observation and offers three primary analytics functions:

• Unusual behaviour detection,

• Tripwire, and

• Left object detection.

Previously customers had to choose which of the analytical functions they wanted to use, but in the latest version they buy one licence and configure the above as required.

In speaking about the latest iSentry version, Heenan says it is integrated into Milestone (although users can still use the native interface) and can handle automated responses to supplement guarding services and let humans focus on more important issues. The new version requires even less operator intervention than before (it previously rejected up to 95% of triggers autonomously, a number that has been improved).

Panoptes MTI (moving target indicator) also remains in the company’s portfolio. A new version of the Australian surveillance solution is due this year which will also be integrated with Milestone and sport new classification capabilities and a VMS alarm manager.

Kestrel is another MTI solution that automatically detects movement in visual and infrared light, and also offers thermal full motion video from manned and unmanned vehicles.

BriefCam offers post event forensics through video synopsis, although Heenan says the South African market seems more interested in the built-in data analytics, especially in the retail environment. The latest version also includes new facial recognition capabilities and is integrated with Milestone.

PlateID is a locally developed automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) application that ISDS is selling with great success, also integrated with Milestone.

Defendec is an application from Estonia which ISDS has brought to South Africa. It specialises in remote monitoring. When the software’s artificial intelligence detects and classifies an event as being of interest at a remote location, it sends still images to the control room to save on bandwidth. It is aimed at areas with low bandwidth and/or poor connectivity.

Milestone Systems is the company’s latest addition to its portfolio (as mentioned above). ISDS has distribution rights for the management platform in Africa, but will initially concentrate on the South African market.

As a distributor, ISDS has the technical skills on board to assist its channel partners where required, and it will also offer training to help them get up to speed with the various solutions it offers. While the business is ongoing, an official launch of the restructured company and announcement of the Milestone distribution agreement will take place in April.

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