Helsinki, Finland based Mirasys develops and supplies the software that helps organisations to efficiently manage information captured by digital video and CCTV cameras. It was founded in 1997, remains privately owned, and recorded turnover of just under €7 million in 2007. Mirasys software manages over 220,000 video surveillance cameras across the world. It employs over 50 members, based out of offices in Finland, Germany, Spain and the UK. It also has a network of sales partners across the rest of Europe, and in North America and Asia.

Jukka Riivari - CEO Mirasys Ltd.

Jukka Riivari brings with him over 20 years experience from the public and private sectors including professional services, systems integration, product development, marketing and sales.  He also brings considerable experience of introducing superior product and restructuring complex businesses. He began his career as Vice President of the Emerging Products Group for Teamware, part of the Fujitsu/ICL corporate family followed by five years at Nokia Group Oy, during which time he became Director of Corporate Sales and Marketing for Nokia’s Global WAP and also for Terminal Software Sales of Nokia Mobile Software which competed successfully with Microsoft.  He then became Vice President of Terminal Platform Sales for Nokia Technology Platforms.

Whilst at Nokia, he was appointed to the board of Meridea Financial Software and in 2003 helped the company meet its initial investment plan milestones to becoming a web and mobile banking company.  In 2004 he left Nokia to become CEO and President of Meridea, an organisation recognised by Red Herring as one of its Top100 companies. Jukka Riivari is now serving as the CEO of Mirasys Ltd since August 2007.

F&S: Can you provide a brief introduction to Mirasys and the products/services it offers?

Mirasys: Founded in 1997, Mirasys is an open platform IP video surveillance software vendor, catering to the hybrid and IP-only video security market. We supply software for the entry and enterprise use of recorded video, and if needed, package it for specific built-integrated network video recorders that are fully supported and maintained by us and our partners. Our solutions cater from a stand-alone video recorder with 2-4 cameras to enterprise-wide distributed system with hundreds of recorders and thousands of cameras. Largest installed clients have a video surveillance “hub”, recording close to 1,000 cameras in production.

Our core competency lies in our own software IPR, which is the result of our more than 200 man-years of investment into product development that continues with around €2 million every year.

Moreover, our integrated products are based on common PC hardware provided through partnerships with Dell and HP. The camera portfolio we support comprises most large and well-known technology providers such as Panasonic, Sony, Bosch and Axis Communications, and most recently in megapixel cameras: Arecont Vision and IQinVision.

F&S: Could you highlight some of the key benchmarks in the history of Mirasys? Have there been any significant breakthroughs in the last few years or so, which provide significant leverage for the company today?

Mirasys: Some of our key benchmarks are as follows:

1998: We won our first prestigious contract in the banking sector. We are the pioneer in local market in encouraging banks to stop using tape recording for tracking their in-branch activities. Mirasys was able to convince the Finnish Banking society of the benefits that banks, as a whole, would enjoy by making evidence video easier to share and deliver to parties investigating incidents. The acceptance of the merits of digital video by the banking society led to the company becoming a key supplier for major banks in Finland, wherein the banks realised the benefits that they would enjoy if the police could investigate incidents with a uniform security solution.

2002-2003: We witnessed a breakthrough in Nordics after Swedish legislation changed, allowing CCTV video to be recorded, as a result of which we became the largest vendor in Sweden for video surveillance recording software. Expansion plans led to entry into other Nordic countries such as Norway, Denmark and Iceland, where we hold a significant market share at present.

2004: Major contracts with Securitas Systems (currently Niscayah) and another major petrol station chain, which decided to harmonize all its video surveillance systems in Spain. This positioned us to become the 4th largest in the Spanish market, backed by Niscayah’s countrywide distribution and service capability.

2005: Introduced advanced adaptive motion detection software, developed in-house by Mirasys’s own engineers, in contrast to using standard libraries to meet the diverse weather conditions of the Nordic countries. We introduced a 2nd generation Microsoft Windows user interface, which reinforced our existing Ohto-award for usability by the Finnsec association.

2006: We were recognized by Deloitte, which chose us as one among the Fast 500 in the EMEA region.

2007: We released a new software version capable of handling megapixel resolution and managing high-resolution storage requirements. This enabled much better identification of criminals, especially in highly vulnerable businesses such as the retail or banking sectors, leading to faster resolution of incidents.

2008: Our software is one of the first to support H.264 standard in the European market. Building further on the megapixel benefits and dramatically reducing the needed network bandwidth and storage space, H.264 makes it economically possible to deploy megapixel technology much more widely in organizations and takes it into use in other verticals as well.

F&S: Can you discuss a few challenges facing video management software vendors in the surveillance industry and how has the company overcome these challenges?

Mirasys: Some of the key challenges that we look to address are:

Most of the countries in Europe still have a large installed base for analogue solutions and we see that the market is undergoing a drastic change to IP. Educating end users on the benefits of IP is crucial for growth.

Increasing need for higher-resolution pictures among end users and thus, large storage requirements – there is a rush to capture this growing market.

Advancements in storage technology to build software products that can better cope with searching, managing, viewing and archiving much larger data sets than before. We intend to make it possible to be able to store critical data for very long periods and search huge amounts of unstructured data quickly, with intuitive and sophisticated tools.

Economic downturn, especially in the construction sector, in some markets poses a significant challenge. Since we are Europe focussed, we will be affected by this challenge in markets where we hold a large share. However, the overall growth will be balanced due to stronger growth in other European markets.

F&S: Can you briefly highlight the company’s performance in 2007 and 2008?

Mirasys: In 2007, Mirasys recorded revenues of around €7.0 million. We forecast around 20.0 – 30.0 per cent growth forecast in 2008. In the previous years, share from software vs. mixed product (software and hardware) was 10.0 and 90.0 per cent, respectively. However, this year, we forecast a strong growth in the software segment alone. In terms of new products, the stand-alone Mirasys NVR Pro has been a successful new product launched in 2007, targeted at small-sized applications with limited numbers of cameras, and Mirasys NVR Enterprise for organizations that want to standardize enterprise-wide solutions. We are witnessing the growing trend of large multinationals perceiving the benefits in choosing only one software solution for their enterprise-wide security activity.

F&S: What factors have been the most important in terms of driving growth and how do you expect those to change over time?

Mirasys: Key drivers for us include:

• Our geographic expansion into new markets has had a positive impact on our sales.
• High-resolution cameras are witnessing about 100-200 per cent growth every year, hence it is a major driver for video management software providers.
• We have a good combination of strengths in a low-risk purchase market, which is growing steadily.
• We have also identified a large potential from applications with limited purpose and introduced NVR Pro to cater to such applications.

F&S: Can you expand on the competitive landscape for video management software providers in the European market?

Mirasys: In the video management software market, Milestone is an established competitor. We look at Bosch, Cieffe(March Networks) and Genetec operating in the medium-range market. We overlap with Indigo vision in the airport and port sector. Pelco is a key participant focussing on the higher-end solutions. We adopt a best-of-breed approach and therefore, partner with key providers of control room software like GE Mastermind so as to offer the best solution for the customers.

F&S: How do you compare price vs. performance of Mirasys products with that of other video management solution providers in the market?

Mirasys: We are a high-volume vendor, focussing on delivering a high level of functionalities, an intuitive user interface and great value at low prices.

F&S: How would you categorize the end-user market? Where do they fit best- small, medium or high end of the market?

Mirasys: 

We are involved in a wide range of projects and are especially good in projects that are logistically challenging such as deploying systems across various branches of a company; for example, a petrol station with 3,000 filling stations across Europe. Our strong partnerships with Ingram Micro and Mikrolog provide us with a highly scaleable logistics capability.

In case of complex projects, with advanced design and intelligence to be incorporated, an advantage for Mirasys is its ability to deploy quickly, since our partners like Niscayah, Securitas and G4S have high service capacity and with our logistics outsourced (based on large-scale hardware vendors like Dell and HP), we enjoy faster response times. Our standard delivery terms for a small set of built-to-order video recording servers is few days, and we meet it in 90 per cent of deliveries.

We are strong in growing sectors such as education and retail, where large contracts are won through public tender and tough price negotiations, which give us a strong edge.

M&S: How do you educate the end users on your solutions?

Mirasys: We use standard tools such as seminars, monthly updates and onsite training upon installation/delivery on product features. Our customers’ satisfaction with our education services is consistently better than the competition.

F&S: What do you consider are your key business differentiators and how have they given you an edge over your competitors?

Mirasys: 

Many vendors are offering dedicated devices for video storage, but with the imminent drop in prices of PC hardware, dedicated storage devices are expected to face tremendous price competition. The investment in future will move towards cameras and software from the present focus on storage hardware. Large organisations are centralising purchasing so that hardware and software are procured separately Our business model revolves around offering software and encouraging end users to buy hardware locally. Hence, being a pure software vendor allows us to focus on our core competency and quickly penetrate global markets. We expect this trend of separating hardware from the software to gain momentum in the future and therefore, we already have an edge in this market.

Mirasys was the first software vendor to offer advanced motion detection as part of its offering to meet the diverse weather of the Nordic countries. We were awarded for this in early 2005. In the future, we will benefit from our competency when building further intelligence into our system. In addition, our products are well known for their user-friendliness. We were recently awarded a worldwide contract of a Swedish clothing retailer chain based on the several months of pilot projects, in which our solution beat the others in the ability to catch in-store thieves because the staffs was able to use it more effectively than other solutions.

F&S: How strong is Mirasys’s R&D, and mention a few measures that the company has taken to address customer needs like network bandwidth optimization, false alarm, issues on privacy, data sharing and so on, to improve customer satisfaction?

Mirasys: The following are some areas we are working on:

Intelligent distribution of alarms to mobile devices and PDAs, engaging the organisation at large in larger operating entities to contribute to the security of the workplace. We are also investing in intelligent video analytics that would cut down on the false alarm levels and make sure the real incidents get the attention they deserve.

Developing fine-grained access control systems that incorporate a user-tracking functionality, which limits the playback of video especially to authorised personnel.

F&S: Can you give us a glimpse of what are the opportunities you wish to tap in the near future and where would you see the video management market five years from now?

Mirasys: We believe that the use of video recording will quickly go beyond the security domain. For instance, coaching and debriefing systems will soon become an everyday reality in corporate and educational life, making it more reliable and hassle-free.

F&S: What other products or services will Mirasys be adding to the mix in the near future?

Mirasys: 

• We look to bring large control stations for our centralised systems, which enable control and navigation through thousands of cameras and related activities, when directing a response to an incident.
• Virtualising servers by utilising technologies from VMWare and Microsoft to pool in network video recorders into a server farm.
• Furthermore, intelligence analytics such as object tracking and people counting combined with wireless networks to offer intelligence solutions.

F&S: Do you see any regulatory hurdles coming up in the near future?

Mirasys:

We look forward to more regulations in the future and more stringent laws to ensure adherence to the regulations, resulting in an increase in the usage of recorded video as the ultimate source of evidence. There is a need to regulate more effectively to make recording and storing more organised in complex systems and diverse organisations, protecting the individual’s privacy and preventing unintended and inappropriate use of the material.