HeiTel continues push into U.S. market

MILLERSVILLE, Md.—Hot on the heels of a partnership with Hunt Valley, Md.-based AlarmWATCH, Heitel, a developer, manufacturer and distributor of hardware and software solutions for video intervention and remote monitoring, in early May continued its partnership drive with announcements of partnerships with Lafayette, La.-based Acadian Monitoring services and Stafford, Texas-based BEI Security. Both companies will now deliver HeiTel's Video Gateway solution to dealers, allowing central stations to monitor legacy CCTV systems live and realize new streams of RMR.

HeiTel CEO Dirk Ostermann said the Video Gateway solution brings legacy systems up to date and offers customers more value. “It's a very successful concept that we've been using for a few years in Europe and South Africa. Security dealers and central stations have been telling us it's great because they don't really like the verification approach because it's just a very short sequence, and they'd like to have more, to add more value to the end user, at the end of the day,” Ostermann said. “We do what we call Video Intervention Services … It has two-way audio. If someone's breaking in, the central has video in a second on the screen and they have audio connection to the site, and so they can communicate to discipline the person breaking in.”

BEI Security EVP Bill Elliott said the HeiTel partnership allowed BEI to further its reach. “BEI was founded a number of years ago on the premise that audio and video intervention by our off-duty and retired police officers, real time, during situations was far superior to traditional alarm response or video verification. Heitel allows us to communicate with customer sites that are equipped with legacy systems, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater,'” Elliott said. “We can offer customers running on old technology the ability to bridge to new technologies … HeiTel was the best-of-breed based on our evaluation and the evaluations of some dealers that we work with.”

Acadian director of operations Kenny Savoie agreed the HeiTel solution brought more value to end users and more RMR to dealers. “As Acadian continues to strive to provide the most comprehensive service portfolio to our dealer network, this is the latest component we've value-added that is specifically geared to help our customers gain additional RMR,” Savoie said in a release. “While we have long offered remote video monitoring and video intervention along with other IP security services, our dealers and integrators have not been able to penetrate a certain segment of their existing customer base using legacy video systems. There are many such customers in the market that can greatly benefit from these services; however, the expense of upgrading their entire system with a new DVR, IP network cameras or other technology makes it very cost prohibitive.”