Bidvest Magnum, Dimension Data and EMC Southern Africa have formed an alliance to provide South African organisations with solutions that enable them to streamline management of their physical security environments and to better leverage data for their physical security and surveillance business needs.
These solutions marry physical security devices such as alarm detection, access control, biometrics, CCTV, and digital video recorders with information technology to help organisations improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their physical security environments. The offerings are targeted at vertical markets such as cash handling, distribution, banking, retail and mining.

Bidvest Magnum provides the physical security solutions, expertise and operational skills to the alliance, while Dimension Data is responsible for IT systems integration and network infrastructure. EMC provides the data centre products for the solution, including storage devices, virtualisation software, RSA data security tools, and Documentum content management.

Says Nigel Steyn, physical security subject matter expert at EMC Southern Africa: “Organisations around the world are rapidly replacing legacy surveillance and security systems with IP-based devices that allow them to collect and store a wealth of data that they can leverage for better insight into their security environments.”

“This has created a massive new opportunity for information technology companies in the global physical security market, which is globally worth $5,6-billion a year. We are excited to be working with Dimension Data and Bidvest Magnum to offer South African organisations a complete solution to their physical security needs.”

“Private businesses and public entities are sharpening their focus on IP-based physical security and surveillance systems in an effort to tighten risk management and slash the rising costs of expanding and maintaining legacy video surveillance systems,” says Pierre du Plessis, special project manager at Bidvest Magnum Technology.

“By working with EMC and Dimension Data, we can offer our joint clients a complete solution that allows them to take advantage of the benefits of IP technologies such as the ability to securely store data for easy online retrieval and analyse it for business insight.

“Clients will be able to depend on a single point of contact for design, installation, support and operation of their entire physical security infrastructure from the edge device to the data centre technology.

“Our focus on the network and data centre fits like a glove with Bidvest Magnum’s focus on physical security and EMC’s marker-leading technology in a market where physical and information security are beginning to converge,” says JP Smith, CTO and presales manager for data centre solutions at Dimension Data.

“Our solutions will help clients reduce costs and improve operational efficiency in the security space. By providing them with the ability to access the right data at the right time from anywhere, our solution will also help our clients to use advanced analytics solutions to drive value from the information they collect through their security devices.”