Wednesday, August 16, 2006

In The Surveillance Sweet Spot

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Christopher Gettings, chief executive of Chantilly, Va.'s, VideoNext, has his full share of an entrepreneur's most important asset: pluck.

"My confidence in what we're doing is phenomenal," says Gettings, 43.

VideoNext's 28 employees develop software that displays the images and stores data drawn from video cameras (analog and digital), sensors and the like. The company's product turns a PC into a command center, complete with virtual joystick, allowing the user to track multiple views from multiple security cameras on a Web-browser-type application. On the back end, the company asserts, the software can analyze the images and data to help the user to distinguish animals from people, track vehicle speed and measure crowd density, among other functions.

The software looks timely, given public and private sector fixation on security, as well as large-scale and data-rich government initiatives in physical access and radio frequency identification. Indeed, VideoNext's customers hail mostly from big government agencies and the U.S. military. Gettings is mum on his top line, allowing only that the company broke even on sales somewhere between $1 million and $10 million.

Full story at