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Milestone acquires Connex International Inc
Copenhagen, Denmark and Minneapolis, Mn (USA)
Milestone Systems
is purchas-
ing all outstanding shares of the
surveillance training, certification
and consulting company Connex
International
, based out of Min-
neapolis, Minnesota. Milestone
was already a majority stakeholder
in Connex from an initial invest-
ment in July 2010.
For years the Connex teams
have set up, managed and per-
formed Milestone channel partner
training in many languages with
proven success across all regions.
In recent years, Connex has added
rigorous certification testing and
documentation of Milestone
Solution Partner integrations with
the Xprotect open platform, such
as access control, analytics, geo-
spatial positioning, video synopsis,
360° camera view de-warping,
network video storage and more.
Milestone is now fully invest-
ing in these dedicated resources,
supporting the need for continued
education in the physical security
sector to further enable the trend
from analogue to IP technology.
Training the partner channel in
open platform IP video skills
creates value for everyone in the
industry: increasing technical
expertise differentiates system
integrators in the market and
most importantly, ensures that
they deliver the best solutions to
customers.
"Our international ecosystem
of competent distributors and
resellers is key to the Milestone
strategy for continued growth. To
further accelerate, globalise and
align our efforts to strengthen the
training of this ecosystem, Mile-
stone has decided to fully acquire
and include Connex in the core of
our business operations," says Lars
Thinggaard, President and CEO,
Milestone Systems.
He continues: "As a key
component in our pursuit to serve
the clients of the future, Milestone
will continue to invest significant
resources in the Milestone Knowl-
edge Program and the teams driv-
ing our global training concepts to
market. The full inclusion of Con-
nex into Milestone is a testimony
to this strategy. Their services
support Milestone partners in
delivering the most competitive,
well-designed and high quality
solutions in the industry."
The aim for the initial transi-
tion in Q4 of 2013 will be to
continue the existing training
operations while building out the
global capacity including plans
for launching self-paced online
certification courses for chan-
nel partners. In addition to the
Milestone Knowledge Program,
the professional consulting services
provided by Connex to key Mile-
stone partners will be incorporated
into Milestone's core business
framework.
Lars Thinggaard,
President and CEO,
Milestone Systems.
Global RFID market to reach $7.88 billion
Cambridge, UK
According to a new RFID sector
survey by Idtechex Research, the
RFID market will increase from
$6.98 billion in 2012 to $7.88
billion this year, and will reach
$23.4 billion in 2020.
This includes tags, readers
and software/services for RFID
cards, labels, fobs and all other
form factors for both passive
and active RFID. The market
for RFID has grown steadily
despite the economic meltdown
due to the diverse nature of its
applications from tagging retail
apparel to transport ticketing to
animals.
Historically and today,
Governments have driven most
RFID orders as they improve ef-
ficiency (transit systems), safety
(passport tagging) and protect
industries (animal tagging).
Since 2000 there has been a
strong push to use passive RFID
to improve supply chain visibil-
ity, with a wide range of invest-
ment in new RFID technolo-
gies, new standards and much
publicity. Inevitably as with
most new technologies, aspects
were over hyped and demand
not in sync with capacity, but
as we entered 2010 the industry
emerged from the hype cycle
and over the following years
until now, has entered a period
of rapid growth and profitability
for some. There are different
rates of growth for different ap-
plications and many challenges
and opportunities still exist.
In total, Idtechex find that 5.9
billion tags will be sold in 2013
versus 4.8 billion in 2012.
The last five years has seen
consolidation throughout the
value chain in passive UHF
RFID with some companies
emerging in true phoenix-from-
ashes style. This is mainly driven
by one application retail
apparel which will globally
demand 2.25 billion RFID
labels in 2013. Some suppli-
ers are now profitable and see
rapid growth ahead. As in most
emerging technology, there will
be blips along the way such
as the current UHF RFID
litigation, but Idtechex do not
believe this is a show stopper
no-one makes money then.
After apparel tagging, passive
UHF is deployed in many dif-
ferent application areas for asset
tracking and other applications.
These are small volumes in their
own right but add up to hun-
dreds of millions of tags per year
given the strong payback they
give users. Idtechex Research
expects 3.1 billion passive UHF
RFID tags to be sold in 2013.
However, despite passive
UHF selling more tags than
passive HF for the first time in
2012, Idtechex Research finds
that the money spent on passive
UHF tags will be $247 million,
versus $2.15 billion on HF and
$713 million on LF RFID. The
higher value of HF and LF is
due to a variety of RFID tags in
high value applications includ-
ing animal tagging, contactless
smart cards and passports.
Indeed, the size of the market
of HF tags will continue to be
larger than the UHF tag market
over the next decade, by money
but not volume. Those in HF
and LF tend to be relatively
large, profitable enterprises,
some of whom are moving into
the high growth but as yet lower
value passive UHF market.
In a business approaching
$8 billion this year, one could
expect a one billion dollar leader
but we could not find a player
clocking half that figure. Of the
800 or so suppliers, IdtechEx
only count eight with revenues
more than $100 million, and
less than twenty with sales
between $20 million to $100
million. Most, but not all, in
the top 8 provide complete
solutions, which is still where
most of the big money goes,
with the others being dominant
in their part of the supply value
chain for a particular technol-
ogy type.
Using new, unique informa-
tion researched globally by
Idtechex technical experts, the
new report RFID Forecasts,
Players & Opportunities
2014-2024 analyses the RFID
market in many different ways.
Full analysis by each market is
given in great detail including
in-depth historic data by appli-
cation type from 2005 year by
year to 2020 and with a 2024
outlook. Forecasts are given by
tag numbers, asp and value for
more than 20 applications for
passive and active RFID. RFID
reader forecasts are provided
along with market size by ap-
plication area and trends by
territory. In addition to the
report there is an accompany-
ing spreadsheet in Excel format
giving access to the key data
contained in tables throughout
the report.