Qognify sees opportunity in Hexagon acquisition, no disruptions expected

Qognify is the first of potentially many acquisitions Hexagon AB may make as it ramps up to challenge Motorola for market share in the security space, an executive told SecurityInfoWatch.com this past week at ISC West.

Hexagon, a $5.1 billion conglomerate based in Sweden, just in the last five years has bought more than two-dozen companies. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the deal for Qognify March 31 after the announcement came last December. The purchase is expected to be completed Thursday.

For now, Qognify expects to remain a separate business under the umbrella of Hexagon, says Jeremy Howard, vice president of security sales at Qognify. He doesn’t expect any disruptions to Qognify’s channel or for customers.

“We have a very large dealer network that resells software platforms. I think there will be lots of benefits to our partner ecosystem because they’ll be exposed to, and be able to maybe participate in, public safety offerings that they didn’t have access to before,” Howard says.

“And Hexagon is not in the installation business. So there’s lots of customers they have that, if they wanted to choose Qognify for the VMS, they need partners to install that and put that in. So there’s lots of synergies between the two companies.”

Hexagon is a global leader in digital reality solutions combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies. Hexagon acquired Qognify from Battery Ventures, a global, technology-focused investment firm. Qognify will operate as part of Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure and Geospatial division.

Qognify was formed in 2015 when Battery Ventures acquired the physical security division of NICE Systems, thus creating a new brand in the market.

In 2018, Qognify acquired On-Net Surveillance Systems Inc. with its brands OnSSI and SeeTec, forming a leading global player in the physical security market. Qognify’s video management (VMS) and incident management (EIM) solutions are used by companies and organizations to mitigate risk and reduce the impact of incidents related to security, safety and operations.

Steve Shine, president and CEO at Qognify, highlighted the opportunity for the company, through the Hexagon acquisition, to expand its footprint in true enterprise-class physical security solutions – especially in key verticals such as public safety, infrastructure and transportation. 

Hexagon President and CEO Ola Rollén previous notes Qognify’s solutions are “a natural expansion of our public safety portfolio, adding comprehensive and tightly integrated video capabilities that can provide dispatchers, responders and investigators with new levels of intelligence to serve and protect their communities.”

Also at ISC West, Qognify revealed some changes with its VMS products. Through acquisition, Howard says, the company ended up with four different VMS platforms that are now being consolidated into a singular product, Qognify VMS (QVMS). It is more of a re-branding, not an entirely new product, although QVMS has now been launched in the U.S. Ocularis users can remain on that system or upgrade to Qognify VMS.

“Because they share that same recorder, you don’t have any of the challenges associated with video recording and migrations and things that are painful for an end user,” Howard says.

Users and companies on the company’s NiceVision, an open-platform IP video surveillance solution, are also moving QVMS. “That is more of a migration. Those are some very large-margin users that use NiceVision. Some of them have already moved over, others are in the planning stages for moving over. So, we’ve got lots of moving parts for that,” Howard says.

“Our roadmap for Qognify VMS, now that we have a single platform, is to be innovative again. We’re starting to do things with metadata from edge cameras and being able to search that metadata within the platform,” he adds. “We just integrated to the access body-worn cameras and can stream video through our platform.

“With Hexagon coming on board, they’re going to invest in this business. So we don’t know exactly what that looks like. We do know that there’s already initiatives on the way to integrate Qognify VMS into Hexagon platforms, all of their public safety platforms, so that there is synergy between traditional Hexagon public safety, CAD solutions and video solutions as well.”