Access control and security solutions: '5 Minutes With' Video Interview with Tim Northwood from Inner Range

'5 Minutes With' Tim Northwood, General Manager from Inner Range

SourceSecurity.com (SSc): Tell us more about Inner Range and its contribution to the security industry?

Tim Northwood (TN): Inner Range was an Australian company, originally founded back in 1988. So it's been around for about 30 years and really probably the pioneer in integrated access control and security systems. So I would say the first in the world to go down that route and it has been in Europe since about 2000. Our operation is based out of Reading, and we deliver integrated solutions to about 30 countries worldwide. I guess our major contribution is probably we were the first company to deliver a truly integrated security and access platform, and we've been driving that innovation forward for the past 30 years. I think a lot of people have tried to copy us but not quite got there yet!

SSC: What would you say are Inner Range's points of differentiation in a crowded market?

TN: Yeah I think that's an interesting question because I'm not sure that the market for integrated access and security, the way we do it, is that crowded. There are a few companies that do similar to what we do, but I would say from a technical point of view, we stand out because of the great flexibility and scalability that are solutions. So you can go from a single site, one access door, 16 alarm inputs, up to a massive global enterprise system covering cities, countries, hundreds of thousands of doors, hundreds of thousands of inputs. Something else that is a bit different for us, is that we are able to deploy our systems over IP infrastructure, traditional 485 or a hybrid combination of both technologies, so those are the first two; probably the last point I would say is that we have our own dedicated R&D team so we don't outsource any R&D - it's all done in-house and those guys have a huge number of years experience in the business, which allows customer requests of different kinds to respond really quickly of integrations or customizations. With that volume of integration work done, we offer customers a lot more choice maybe than others

SSC: How are your values as an Australian company reflected in your global business footprint?

TN: Well I mean obviously originally as an Australian company, it's not the first Australian company I've actually worked for; they're very entrepreneurial companies and businesses, never afraid to take their solutions overseas. In the early days, once they established a home market in Australia, they really wanted to kick some doors down in central Europe - sort of like one man would travel with all the kit, and demonstrate it - and had a real sort of can-do attitude; that's the typical thing that personifies sort of entrepreneurial Australian businesses.

SSC: What would you say are the benefits of combining access control and intruder alarms in a single system?

TN: You're going to use the installer, and the end-user is going to pay for one set of hardware. You're not going to pay for two systems. So also one cabling network,
so reduced costs on both hardware and especially on labor, the amount of time it takes to put in.