New Vidsys CEO says being a stand-alone company is optimal

VIENNA, Va.—Michael P. Jackson, the newly named CEO of Vidsys, believes that the PSIM provider is perfectly situated as a stand-alone business to grow.

While several PSIM providers, including Proximex, Rontal, and Orsus, have been acquired by large companies, Jackson said being freestanding in the market “is an optimal space for us.”

In fact, Jackson said he believes Vidsys is more attractive as a business partner because it's a stand-alone business.

Many other so-called PSIM companies are in fact “device-centric operating platforms,” he said. “Vidsys coined the term PSIM and helps drive what it means to be a PSIM.”

“We can partner with a lot of different people and we can integrate to a multiplicity of products,” said Jackson, who believes Vidsys can “be more nimble” than its competitors.

“We are large enough to be successful and small and adroit enough to manage change,” Jackson said.

A Vidsys independent board member since 2009, Jackson was named chairman and CEO on Jan. 13. Jackson told Security Systems News he's been an active board member, spending “anywhere from two to four days a month with the management team.”

While Vidsys will focus equally on government and commercial enterprises, he noted that the company expects to see growth in its business at all levels of government, and at government-owned transportation facilities. “We have several large municipalities … as current customers,” Jackson said. “And we are in discussions with a number of other ones.”

Jackson said Vidsys wants to work with integrators to make them successful. He said his ties to private and public sector clients will be helpful in this endeavor, noting that he has “strong personal relationships with all major defense contractors in the country.”

Jackson served as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation and deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. He was also SVP of AECOM and COO of Lockheed Martin IMS' Transportation Systems and Services, where he worked on the EasyPass systems for many states.

While most of Vidsys' growth has occurred in the United States, Jackson sees a “tremendous global market” for Vidsys and said the product is available now in Spanish and Arabic. The 50-person company, based here, has an office in London and representatives in Abu Dhabi.

“Some of our U.S. customers are clearly global operators [who want to] link to assets outside the corporate headquarters and beyond the U.S. boundaries. Vidsys gives them tools to connect and the tools to instantly monitor security incidents on a broader scale,” he said.

Many Vidsys customers have “a multiplicity of assets, and a multiplicity of sensors [to keep an eye on], the obvious ones being access control, cameras, elevators and door locks,” he said.  But there are different types of sensors that Vidsys can monitor “depending on the business that can be corralled by PSIM and channeled to a dynamic platform,” so security personnel can assess the situation and take action, Jackson added.

One advantage of Vidsys is that it's “device-neutral” with the ability to work with any variety of legacy and new systems. “That's the power of open architecture,” Jackson said.