When security dealer Steven Clarke searched for a surveillance system with night-vision, he immediately zoomed in on Extreme CCTV.

"My customers are big companies, primarily in the construction and logging industries with extensive facilities and expensive equipment in open areas - and their security needs are equally as vast," says the president of AV Locksmithing in Barry's Bay.

"We chose Extreme because their heavy-duty cameras are made to handle big tasks and there's not many CCTV makers offering this level of infrared night optics. This made our decision easy," he says.

What isn't so easy, says Stanley Jurgielewicz, manager of special projects at St. John's University in New York City, is safeguarding 20,000 students on three sprawling campuses scattered across the Big Apple.

File photo by Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
CEO Jack Gin has positioned Extreme CCTV Inc. as a surveillance equipment global leader.

"We needed surveillance cameras that could read car licence plates as they enter or exit through our main gates at any time of the day or night and give us crystal clear images under any kind of severe weather conditions," he says.

Jack Gin, president and CEO of Extreme CCTV Inc., which is based in Burnaby, B.C., likes to hear those kinds of endorsements.

Word-of-mouth marketing fortifies Gin's R&D fixation at Extreme, a global leader in the design, development and manufacture of active-infrared night-vision surveillance equipment.

"Research is essential to our company," he says. "What differentiates us is our aggressive approach to pushing around the technology of electronics and the physics of optics."

Technology and innovation are the paramount drivers in the $2-billion physical security sector of the security industry, according to Tracy Cannata, executive director of the Markham-based Canadian Security Association (CANASA). "Ours is a high-tech, fast-paced industry that's becoming increasing digital and wireless.

"Integration of security with other departments, particularly IT, to secure the corporate environment, will soon dominate the marketplace as software and other technologies becomes a larger part of a company's overall security picture," she says.

"Manufacturers recognize this trend and to stave off increased competition from new players coming into the marketplace, the Canadian security industry will have to stay current on topics ranging from convergence to IP, Wi-Fi and VoIP to WiMAX (a high-speed wireless broadband technology). This is the future of physical security," Cannata says.

Brampton-based RBH Access Technologies Inc. exemplifies the message. The wholly Canadian manufacturer of access control systems has expanded its reach to 62 countries since it opened in 1995.

The company recently received CANASA's 2005 Dealers' Choice Award for its URC-2000 (universal reader controller), the world's first rack-mountable access controller. At 48 centimetres, it fits just about any space in a computer room and has built-in intelligence and flashware. It can also be integrated to a digital video recorder to accommodate real-time changes in access parameters, including access-card expirations.

Larry Turnbull, RBH's regional marketing manager, says the principal vision of his company is building access-control systems that combine the elements of innovation, quality, integrity and value. "We've always been committed to R&D and constantly scan the globe for emerging electronic trends."

In 1996, RBH released Axiom III, the world's first commercially available 32-bit native Windows 95/Windows NT access-control software package, complete with 32-bit control hardware architecture.

"And last year we saw a growing market for smaller access controllers with more flexibility," Turnbull says. "The idea for the URC-2000 was conceived in April 2005 and our R&D department came up with the finished product that was put on the market by September.

"As technology evolves, with advances happening every six months, you've got to turn on a dime to remain competitive in this business. And Canada's security innovators are at the forefront of the international marketplace," he says.

That's a message that is also embraced by Extreme's Gin.

With customers from Kuwait to Canada and Africa to Antarctica, Extreme's all-environment surveillance cameras are engineered to keep tracking movements in some of the world's harshest environments.

The product lines are all vandal and weather-resistant. Some models also work in acidic and corrosive environments, and can be customized to be explosion-protected, bulletproof, waterproof, and hurricane-proof.

"We've mastered the art of creating infrared light for today's surveillance cameras and continue to raise the performance bar of video surveillance with our 24-hour, day/night, all-condition camera technology," Gin says. "We filter the near-infrared. We reflect it. We shape it. We control it. And we give our customers the power to see in bright light, low light or no light conditions."

The publicly traded Extreme reported sales totalling about $24 million in 2005 and Gin says about six per cent of annual revenue is funnelled into R&D. Extreme's core revenue generator is its night-vision licence-plate reading cameras.

"Capturing 30 crisp pictures per second of a vehicle moving at 100 km/h and faster is tough for any technology to grab," Gin says. "But engineering is our cornerstone and if our customers throw us a challenge, we'll find a way to make the physics work for them."

The company's latest launch, its REG-L, an LED tech camera, incorporates new definitive high contrast (DHC) technology for advanced performance imaging with respect to speed, distance and lighting.

"We developed this camera for absolute performance to capture licence plates under challenging ambient conditions," Gin says.

The equipment, he adds, has garnered increasing interest for applications in law enforcement, parking and security.

"The resulting surveillance images integrate seamlessly with industry-standard DVRs (digital video recorders), as well as with automatic licence plate recognition (ALPR) intelligent software, which converts images to alphanumeric data that can be analysed, compared, matched and referenced," he says.

One company that prefers to keep its technological innovations underground is Senstar-Stellar, which is based in Carp, just outside Ottawa.

"We do all of our R&D here in Canada," says Brian Rich, president of Senstar-Stellar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Magal Security Systems of Israel.

"Our cutting-edge Perimitrax technology was developed here. Today, our technology is deployed in thousands of sites in more than 75 countries."

Perimitrax is a pioneering outdoor perimeter-detection apparatus that provides early warning of intrusions into secure areas, minimizing the risk of theft, vandalism, sabotage, kidnapping and escape.

The system generates an invisible electromagnetic field around sensor cables buried about 23 centimetres below the ground.

When an intruder disturbs the field, an alarm is tripped and the signal is communicated to a central controller, which can activate surveillance cameras to focus on the intrusion point.

"Our technology detects moving targets based on their size and movement," Rich says. "A person or vehicle crossing through will trip the alarm, while birds, overhanging foliage, snow and blowing sand are ignored."

Rich doesn't hesitate when asked if R&D is a crucial component of his company's success. "Without a doubt."

(Jack Kohane can be reached at kohane@businessedge.ca)