Amcest partners with hardware and software video suppliers

ROSELLE, N.J.-Dealers who monitor their accounts with Amcest Corp. can now offer video monitoring services to their customers. Amcest recently teamed up with two companies who provide this service -- WebEyeAlert and Digital-Parts. WebEyeAlert is a software solution company that enables cameras to be monitored over the Internet, while Digital-Parts offers instead a hardware-based system. "It's an extension of what we've been doing, which is to provide dealers with items that represent recurring revenue and positive cash flow," said Fred Rosenfeld, executive vice president of Amcest Corp. For WebEyeAlert the arrangement with Amcest marks the company's first distribution channel. "They are going to be introducing our technology to the dealer network," said Chris McKenzie, co-founder of WebEyeAlert with S.K. Ho, the company's chief executive officer, and vice president of marketing development for WebEyeAlert's parent company Biscom Corp. Three different packages will be made available to dealers, said Ho. The small package will be able to handle four cameras or less, the mid-range pack will support four cameras and a multiplexer, while the largest package is suitable for eight to 16 cameras. "WebEye is unique in that it's scalable down so it's affordable for small businesses and residences," said Rosenfeld. "You can take a very inexpensive camera and plug it directly into your USB Port on your PC." Though inexpensive and scalable down, the system offers dealers approximately a $100 profit on software sales and $10 a month profit for monitoring through Amcest, according to Rosenfeld. The similar is true for Digital-Parts' product, which takes more of the black box approach to video monitoring and is geared towards large scale installations. "The systems are highly profitable," said Rosenfeld. Dealers can pocket $45 a month for just alarm and video fees alone, he said. "The key here is the price point meets the market, that's why we're selling them," said Rosenfeld. "We have a hardware solution for our high-end and we have a software based solution for the medium level."