Kastle Systems acquires CheckVideo

FALLS CHURCH, Va.—Kastle Systems International, an integrator and full-service security company that specializes in managed services, announced that it has acquired CheckVideo, a provider of cloud-based intelligent video surveillance.

“We saw an opportunity to do in video what Kastle has done in access control,” Brian Eckert, EVP Kastle Systems, told Security Systems News.

Kastle, which is based here, has annual revenues of about $60 million and $3.7 million in RMR. It has 400 employees and four UL-listed monitoring stations that it refers to as operations centers.

In business since 1972, “cloud-based managed services has been the model we've followed from the beginning,” Eckert said. Kastle's customers are primarily commercial real estate properties and their tenants. “We have 2,000 properties across the U.S. that host 37,000 businesses,” he said.

Kastle has worked with CheckVideo, which is based in Reston, Va., for several years. Nik Gavgani, VP and GM of video for Kastle, said CheckVideo “is not just another piece part … it's a solution.”

Kastle was drawn to CheckVideo's “simplicity, advanced detection capabilities, cloud-based orientation, all those things,” Eckert added.
 
CheckVideo will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Kastle Systems International, but it will remain an independent operating business unit. CheckVideo works with more than 200 resellers and monitoring centers. “Kastle intends to preserve and provide support and enhancement for CheckVideo to service its customers … to allow it to grow and flourish,” Eckert said.

What about channel conflict? Eckert conceded that Kastle has “had private conversation in that regard [with some CheckVideo customers],” but does not foresee any problems. A main reason is that there's not much crossover between Kastle's customers and the customers serviced by CheckVideo's other monitoring and installation partners.  “We have traditionally serviced other vertical markets,” he said.

“We see great growth in video,” Eckert said. He expects that Kastle's ownership of CheckVideo will benefit Kastle, other dealers “and a lot of end users.”

“For the last decade, CheckVideo has been hard at work building a distinctive intelligent video solution,” CheckVideo VP Chris Brown said in a statement. “Our growing list of monitoring partners, resellers and end users [is] a testament to the fact that CheckVideo has the answer that the market wants. Kastle brings us much more than a new large channel to market. It provides us with significant resources to build upon our platform and accelerate the overall market penetration for video as a service.”

In 2007, Kastle was purchased by Mark Ein, a venture capitalist and former principal of the Carlyle Group. Ein brought a group of executives to the company in the next year including Eckert and a new CEO, Piyush Sodha. Last week, Kastle hired a new CFO, Steve Yevich, who for many years served as CFO for Brinks Home Security.

Kastle has branch offices in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston and Dallas. It also has three offices in Australia.

Eckert declined to disclose terms of the deal.