Arecont Vision was founded in 2003. The company is exclusively focused on megapixel technology and offers 20, 10, 8, 5, 3, 2 and 1.3 megapixel network cameras.
Since the beginning in Southern California, Arecont Vision has expanded its worldwide reach beyond North America with offices and representation in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. It has a channel partner sales model including systems integrators, value added resellers, dealers and distributors.
Raul Calderon joined Arecont Vision in 2007 as Vice President of Strategic Relations and transitioned to Vice President of marketing. Now he is Senior Vice President of marketing.

You have grown to be an international company.
"We have around 130-140 employees worldwide and we now operate in every major continent. We have salespeople in about 20 different countries, so we are not just a US based manufacturer operating in the US. A healthy portion of our business comes out of the international market and we think that is extremely important. The future of our company is to maintain our global leadership position in megapixel camera technology."

How big is your revenue?
"I really cannot get into that since we are a private company. But we are bigger than most people think and the revenue will actually be revealed later this year."

Which are your biggest markets?
"Around 55-60 per cent of our business comes out of the North American market and about 25 per cent comes from EMEA. Our three biggest markets are North America, EMEA and APAC."

Which one is the fastest growing?
"In 2010, the fastest growing market was Asia. We had over 100 per cent growth in Asia and as an organisation we grew around 50 per cent last year."

The European market is slower?
"It is growing less fast than our global average. However, we are still seeing very good growth."

How do you think the markets will look in five years from now?
"In five years from now, the EU should have the same size market, or greater than the American market because the number one GDP sector in the world is the EU. If we were to concentrate on one market, our concentration right now would be to get the EU to the same level as the US. The way to do that is to increase marketing, increase brand awareness campaigns and to increase resources on the ground.

The EMEA market is much more heterogeneous than the American market.
"Culturally, every country is very different here. You have to have representatives of that culture to be able to sell in that particular market. We cannot be so arrogant to think we can run it all from the US. We have to have local resources on the ground. It is very tough to take an English-speaking sales person and place him in France and expect success."

How big is your potential in Asia?
"The Asian market is huge. Infrastructure-wise, everything is kind of new. They can gravitate towards IP very quickly, because they had nothing there before. Here in the UK we have 50 years of analogue and coax and migration is a little slower. By all means, the Asian market is an unbelievable potential for us, and especially the Chinese market. But the strategy is a little bit different than the strategy in the US or in the EU. You have to match the strategy with the area that you are trying to go after."

What is the biggest challenge for Arecont Vision?
"I think the biggest challenge is to put the resources in place that are required to master the growth we have right now. We must make sure we prepare the company to become twice, or three times the size we are now. So, we must put resources in place, put structures in place and put procedures in place to carry us through the next growth phase in our business."

What about trying to stay ahead of the market?
"It is always a challenge. When we started this business in 2003, there were not many players doing ultra high resolution or megapixel type imaging. But look where we are now, it ratifies the decisions we made eight years ago to go in this direction. Now, all the big boys are following with their own multi megapixel camera solutions."

Will you continue to concentrate on cameras?
"For the foreseeable future our concentration is all about imaging technology. That is what we are good at."

HD cameras have been a major trend both at this, and last year's Ifsec. What will be the next trend?
"HD is a trend but what we will see is a complete displacement of standard definition technology, whether it is two, five or ten years from now, it is absolutely happening in the same way as it happened to television sets. I also think that cloud computing will have a meaningful impact at some point in time on this market. Whether it will be managed services for security or whether it will be just devices streaming into a cloud and operations being done on those streams somewhere in the cloud, I do not know, but I think that cloud computing will emerge as a big opportunity in the near future, let's say in the next 3-5 years."