This is progress

Our 20 under 40 issue comes out in August, and it's going to be a hum-dinger (actually, it is a hum-dinger already, you just can't see it until it's printed). Working on it, there's been a lot of talk about how we bring not only young people into the industry, but also people from other walks of life (you know, not 55-year-old paunchy white guys).

Then I got the ESX photos in my email box.

I'm sorry, but something about this picture says that the security industry is moving in the right direction.



From left to right, that's Dean Seavers, CEO of GE Security; Cris Carter, Chairman of Carter Bros. (and he's done some other stuff, too); Bud Wulforst, president of the CSAA, and George Gunning, outgoing president of the NBFAA. Cool shot.

Now, if we could just get a woman into that picture...

More about the big brands - this time GE

I'm absolutely blown away by this news about GE considering a sell-off of its appliance division. Really, the company that's been making washers and dryers and ovens for 100 years is going to get out of the business because of a housing slump? I've written about alarm guys becoming too dependent on the housing market, but how is it possible that GE's appliance division made the same mistake?

This also speaks, of course, to the hyper-shortened attention span of the U.S. financial markets. GE announces a six percent drop in first quarter profit and everybody starts selling off GE shares? That's insane. Do these people think GE's going out of business sometime soon? Is there an impending bankruptcy because they're only targeting profits of $2.20 a share?

Sometimes it seems like these professional stock traders don't actually know how the market works. The stock price doesn't go down unless you offer to sell it for less than it's currently trading. If you and everyone else just holds onto the stock, the stock price doesn't move at all. It's pretty simple. So, you sit on the stock for a while, the housing market gets its act back together, GE's profits go back up, and then people want your stock for more than you paid for it, and then you sell it off and make a profit. Pretty simple.

But no, the financial services industry has become so large, and so many people are investing in 401ks and mutual funds and all this other hedge fund business, that there's a giant impetus for simply doing something. If you're not buying or selling, you must be bad at what you do, right? And the money that comes in every day from all those 401ks has to be invested in something, right? So the market churns endlessly, and every little quarterly report is cause for some kind of major sell off or buy action, when anyone who's taken Econ 101 knows that a long view of the market is the only thing that makes sense, and it's very, very rare that one quarter, for a company that's been in business for a 100+ years, could possibly mean anything in the long run.

And this stuff drives me insane:

GE also lowered its 2008 profit target to a range of $2.20 to $2.30 a share, with second-quarter earnings pegged at 53 cents to 55 cents a share. Analysts had expected annual earnings of $2.43 and second-quarter earnings of 58 cents a share, according to FactSet.

So these "analysts" - they're always in the plural and always aggregated - make a guess at what they think will happen, they're wrong, and a bunch of professional traders decide to sell off GE's stock and cheapen the stock price for everyone still holding it, largely middle Americans who own it as part of a portfolio they didn't even design. That totally makes sense.

This news does seem to portend good things for GE Security, however. A sale would bring in a huge amount of cash for research and development, and if GE Security is selling itself on its technology advantage, that can only help. Further, the smaller the company is as a whole, the more attention GE Security is likely to get from upper management and the board, which theoretically is a good thing, though I'm questioning the wisdom of a board that sees a short-term housing crisis and some lumpiness in the metals markets decides the bottom of the market is the time to sell, seemingly under duress.

Maybe GE Security would be best off if Dean Seavers is left to his own devices.

We're back!

Okay, I know a lot of you have been jonesin' for your daily security-blog dope and we've been disappointing you for the past week. Sorry about that. It's a long story, involving Russians, IT guys working late nights, and lots of desk-pounding and cursing (also a fair amount of irony, but I won't get into that). Suffice it to say, we're back, and plenty of stuff has been happening in the meantime. You'll see fleshed out versions of many of these stories on the newswire later today, but here's a quick recap:

Aronson Security Group bought Selectron, establishing a real northwest powerhouse of an integrator. At the same time, they established a convergence division that a lot of your are going to want to take a look at for the purpose of stealing ideas. These guys seem to get that companies want one security guy who handles everything (you know, like making sure the Russians don't get you).

Assa Abloy bought Simons Voss. When I first heard this, I thought it was a little bigger deal than it actually is. Simons Voss makes some really cool wireless locking systems, don't get me wrong. I just thought they were a bigger company due to the enormous booth they had at the Essen show in 2006. Turns out they only do about $60 million a year. Still big, I guess, but not huge (especially in the scope of Assa Abloy). Also, Assa's going to let Simons do their own thing, so don't expect much to change, which is a good thing.

March Networks bought Cieffe, a company from Italy you may not have heard of, but which makes some great IP video technology. They've only recently come to North America - Kolossal Technologies might be their only North American dealer. It's hard to say. But the combination of March's IP stuff for retail and banking and Cieffe's stuff for commercial/industrial applications makes for a very interesting manufacturing partner for progressive integrators. Plus, they've really got a nice global reach at this point.

GE Security bought most of CoVi's assets, signaling a commitment to IP video solutions. Apparently it was quicker to just buy assets instead of CoVi proper, which means GE Security doesn't get the brand (but, as one GE official said as an aside, "I think we've got plenty of brand already"), and the executive staff doesn't come with the deal. They'll be busy honoring warranties and answering questions, most likely. What does come with the deal are all of the engineering and product support types-the brain power behind the technology. If there's one thing I've learned about GE, it's that they love to collect PhDs.

More later, but that's probably enough for now.

New GE head introduced

Dean Seavers met the industry for the first time this morning and looked remarkably comfortable for someone on the job only three weeks. He let the VPs do most of the talking during an hour-long press conference, but led off with a nice quote from Colin Powell about not being afraid to let people under you show their own leadership capabilities. Very apropos, I thought.

Also, he addressed the Smiths fall out, if briefly, saying, "we couldn't agree on combined strategic vision."

I'll have more with Dean for the newswire, after a meeting later today.

GE, Smiths call off joint venture

News has come out of the UK that Smiths Detection and GE have called off their collaboration to tackle the market for scanning devices used in airports and other screening applications. I consider that big news. A number of news organizations have speculated that Smiths is being broken up, which could mean the Smiths Detection arm is simply up for sale. Who's buying?

I still wonder what this means for Registered Traveler.