Case Study: Ingram VARs Team Up For 97-Site Deal

SEE-Comm turned to Ingram Micro, which helped it gain the expertise to tackle the job and assisted it in recruiting other solution providers for a nationwide rollout for the company.

Despite the lack of experience, Greg Starr, co-founder and president of SEE-Comm, wasn't about to give up a potential customer the size of International Paper. The customer had 96 other locations, all with antiquated surveillance systems: Cameras in the company's scalehouses recorded surveillance footage of wood deliveries onto VCR tapes. Personnel at each office pulled the tapes and watched them in realtime, looking for potential theft.

ANATOMY OF A SOLUTION>> COMPANY: SEE-Comm, New Boston, Texas
>> FOCUS: Networking, infrastructure
>> PROBLEM and SOLUTION: International Paper was using an antiquated VCR-based video surveillance system. SEE-Comm developed an IP-based security solution.
>> PRODUCTS USED: IBM Netvista PC, Microtek display, Belkin UPSes, Hawking Technology 16-port switch, Axis 211 Video Surveillance Cameras, Videolarm camera housings, IPSwitch monitoring software, Net Integration Mark I servers, SEE-Comm WeighMaster software
>> LESSONS LEARNED:
> Partnering with other VARs can help win bigger deals.

"You'd walk into a room, and they had nothing but VCR tapes," Starr said. Two years ago, more than $2 million of product was stolen, and International Paper "realized their process wasn't working."

The storage system was particularly frustrating if a mill needed to find old footage, said a company executive who requested anonymity. "If they didn't do a good job of filing tapes and we had to go back a couple of months, that could be a problem," the executive said. "Looking at video for eight hours is boring. The frustration factor was pretty high. We weren't getting the security that we needed."

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SEE-Comm technicians did an initial site visit at the local mill, and then turned to Santa Ana, Calif.-based Ingram for assistance. Ingram's engineers suggested products, connected SEE-Comm with vendors and helped it design a network-based solution with scalable storage and centralized storage management. The solution was based on Mark I servers from Net Integration and 211 Power-Over-Ethernet Video Surveillance Digital Cameras from Axis, Starr said.

SEE-Comm wrote its own code to connect the cameras directly to the mill's scales. Each piece of data could be associated with a video file that could be accessed by International Paper's security staff on-site or remotely. The system checks each data record for several types of timber theft, and users can search data or video by criteria such as date, time or delivery number.

Mill executives liked the design so much that it caught the attention of International Paper's corporate team, Starr said. "Suddenly, this one-location, four-camera deal turned into a 97-location, $2 million deal. It scared us to death," he said. "We don't know anything about video cameras, storage. The first thing I thought was Ingram Micro."

Through Ingram's VentureTech Network, SEE-Comm was able to build a quote for a national rollout by local VentureTech members. It took SEE-Comm 45 minutes to compile a potential partner list to assist with installations in the locations.

"We wanted the client to know we could deliver the product, but also that we had the capability to install and service it at all their sites nationwide," he said. "When we showed the customer that slide, the deal was over. That sealed it. ... We did not talk products, we talked long-term strategy and installation."

The VentureTech Network also gave SEE-Comm an advantage over its four competitors for the project, all of which only had solutions for the local mill, Starr said.

"Our competitors were going to drive someone all over the [United States] to get it done. Their time frame was years. Ours was less than a year," Starr said. "Our solution cost more than twice that of the competition. We had no reason to win this deal. If it had been down to price, we would have lost it the first day. But price went out of the picture when they saw the value we could bring."