Visual Defence's single view to security 5 February, 2007 By Liam Lahey

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The Richmond Hill, Ont.-based company's solutions are designed to provide users with the ability to stream, secure, store and retrieve high quality digital video and audio over standard wire line and wireless networks, thereby eliminating the role of expensive and inflexible analogue CCTV and security systems, officials said. Moreover, VDI's defining difference is its solutions are based upon a non-proprietary, open architecture that integrates with any third party application or legacy analogue video system.

"What we provide to an organization is an integrated, network-centric solution over IP; an end-to-end system and we provide ongoing maintenance to ensure the customer has the most comprehensive solution," explained Bill Watson, CFO for VDI. "We manage and maintain security assets, not data. For instance, we integrate legacy systems and manage those assets whether we're talking video surveillance, a building's fire and burglary alarm systems . . . we converge these systems onto a single platform for the maximum benefit of the customer, who then in turn could expand upon it."

Founded in 2000, VDI has about 120 employees based worldwide, with offices in the U.K., the U.S., and Israel as well as in other Canadian cities. The systems integrator provides network-centric solutions to a number of vertical industries in the interest of tying disparate security/video surveillance systems together and managed off of a single platform.

Essentially, VDI's 3C (command control centre) and Virtual Matrix System (VMS) solutions are its flagship products. Of the number of projects VDI is engaged in currently, one of local interest includes providing Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport with the ability to centrally manage and maintain different surveillance and building detection systems. VDI's focus is on physical security.

"What we've done is take the existing systems at Pearson Airport and apply them to our VMS," Watson said. "It isn't just monitoring, but also management . . . for instance at Pearson, you have the GTAA, Air Canada, and the RCMP all interested in monitoring the baggage handling section. Rather than have three separate cameras for each, there is now one which all three agencies can access."

That converged system can include centrally managing, monitoring, automating, and analyzing everything from legacy video surveillance systems and video encoding, to public address systems, building management (alarms), and voice over IP (VoIP) phones.

The GTAA's stage two would see the expansion of Terminal 1 with the continued deployment of security infrastructure working in conjunction with VDI's VMS.

Lester B. Pearson International Airport is Canada's largest and busiest airport. It is anticipated that traffic through the airport would reach 50 million people per year by 2020.

Also noteworthy, VDI's clientele also includes the Ottawa International Airport, Mississauga Transit, the British Airport Authority, and Stockholm, Sweden's transit authority.

" We've done work with Mississauga Transit, providing them with an ABL-GPS tracking system for all of their busses running along Highway 10," added Michael Godfrey, CTO for VDI. "MT is now able to monitor all of its busses' locations, correlating them against where they should be as per their schedule . . . they've found the [solution] has helped improve their fleet's fuel efficiency and reduce vehicle emissions."