Welcome to the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast, where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven't heard of before. Hi. I'm Max Clark, and I'm with Jacob Hengel, who's the CTO for Your 6.

Jacob, thanks for joining.

Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Max. I appreciate it.

What does Your 6 do?

So your 6 is a physical security as a service organization. The the physical security industry, which kinda makes up surveillance, access control systems, alarm systems, has been very capital expense driven previously, and we're basically taking that same type of solution, leveraging cloud technologies, and delivering that as a service. So more more of an operational expense approach to acquiring and managing those types of of services and solutions.

So are you focused on surveillance, or do you do physical access as well? I mean, how how deep do you go within the customer environment?

Yeah. So the in in our space, there's a common acronym called vSaaS, which is video surveillance as a service. And that's probably the the most common topic because it's easy to talk about, and it's really interesting, and it's it's fascinating. But as a physical security, as a service provider, we take all of those different facets and bundle it together from a single provider. So makes vendor management easier, makes integrations a lot more fluid.

So we really take every every aspect of physical security and deliver that fully as a service all from a single provider.

So we talk about, visual surveillance and and now surveillance as a service. You know, it's it's topical. I mean, today, we're in, you know, it's it's we're still in a COVID nineteen shutdown in some locations. We're in post COVID environments. We're talking about going back to work.

You know, how does your your 6 fit in all of this? And what are you doing for your customers to help them through these process?

Yeah. There's there's 2 really major struggles that that organizations are facing today, and that's you know, it all revolves around keeping assets safe and keeping people safe. Right? So health health and then just getting, you know, getting the economy going, getting people back to work. Those things are major major topics, and there's kinda 2 major concerns, that that business owners and decision makers have around those two topics.

The first one is, how do I safely get people back to work? And for the organizations that can't or that have to do it in limited capacities, It is how do they keep an eye on those assets and those buildings and and whatnot and and keep them safe during changing times while they are remote. And then, frankly, with all the cybersecurity stuff that's commonly in the news, how do you do those things, open open surveillance up to the outside and do that in a manner that's focused on being cyber secure?

Why your 6? There's lots of vendors in the market that offer various surveillance options. I mean, residentially, you talk about like the Ring cameras or, you know, Nest cams. And, you know, companies typically have, mounted cameras on their campuses. What do you guys do that makes you better at this than, you know, other solutions?

Yeah. I wouldn't I would never say anything bad about Ring from, you know, from a software standpoint, a capability standpoint. They do bring a lot of attention to our industry. The the biggest difference is being able to deliver those types of solutions to the enterprise, like, to a corporation and even small business. Right?

Ring really isn't even a fit for small business. I don't mean to speak poorly about them by any means, but, you know, we're not on the news every other night for people getting their accounts hacked and things like that. We just we take a a very cybersecurity focused approach to how we deliver these services and that's it it's critical, you know. And we're in a time where privacy is probably being impeded on more than ever. So protecting our customers, you know, our our motto, your 6 is the military slang for meaning we've got your back, and that's what we do.

You know, we focus on privacy. We focus on delivering these these things that people need, but we we approach it in a very, I hate to say, noncommercial way from that standpoint. We're very focused on truly having our customers back. And that could be, again, for for someone that just has one small building all the way up to, you know, easing the vendor management of having, you know, dozens of locations and who's who's gonna go out and make sure this stuff is you know, the the bearings are greased and the wheels are turning and all that stuff every day. So

So, I mean, who are your customers? I mean, what's the what's the typical profile in terms of, like, size or number of buildings or square footage? I mean, you specific you know, heavy in certain industries or geographies?

Yeah. So we do have some core verticals, but I we we literally do have customers across every single vertical, all the way from a single camera that someone puts in their lobby and maybe they're in the back, and they've got that streaming to an iPad so they can keep an eye on stuff while they're in the back. I mean, very small stuff all the way up to people with thousands and thousands of cameras across hundreds of sites. So we we generally are targeting North America. Most of our customers are quartered in the US, at least.

We do serve global customers. So there's really not much limit to our reach in that regard. But I would say a a bread and butter use case is people that, you know, don't have IT resources at all of their buildings. Right? This this stuff all rides on the network at the end of the day.

It does impact IT conversations. So, generally, the more sites someone has, the the better and better of a fit we become because we just get rid of all that complexity of managing how do I get to and how do I control my surveillance and my access control systems from kinda one single location leveraging the cloud. We we talked about it even on the access control side. If I have 30 warehouses that, you know, a a regional manager needs to go between or anything like that, how do we get them securely in and out of those buildings without having dozens of disparate systems to maintain and patch and keep up on and, you know, HR or IT people creating those users in each of those systems. That's a lot of work.

Now if we can eliminate all that overhead, there's there's real cost savings by putting that user in the cloud once and then just saying, yeah. All of these different locations, here's the the time of day that these people can and can't access these certain areas. And just building profiles around those employees and and automating that so that, you know, a regional person, for example, can go to any site they need to go to and know that one single fob or one single credential or or their fingerprint for that matter gets them into those areas, and it's it's not a nightmare to maintain all that stuff.

Yeah. I mean, I would also imagine when you think of, like, traditional, you know, corporate security or, you know, of of a person at a desk watching monitors and being relatively stationary, you know, versus having the ability to to look at this remotely. I mean, remote access has gotta be a huge consideration for people right now.

It is. I mean, we we use this ourselves every day. You know, we have products coming and going. We have marketing materials coming and going. And and for us, we've you know, we get to know the people that are actually watching the cameras and stuff like that.

We get to know who the UPS guys are and the FedEx guys are and and grant them access to our building even when no one's away. No one's there. Right? If if no one's on-site, how do you grant secure access to a building? You know, we can let them in specific doors, basically, via a secure intercom, kinda like a ring, but a little bit more enterprise focused, a little bit more business focused.

But then extending that call functionality to say, okay. I've I've visually verified who you are. I see what you look like. I've I recognize you. I can see there's nobody else around you.

I'm gonna momentarily grant you access into the secure area. You can leave the packages and and move on with your day. So we can do that with without a single body at the office. That's that's massive. You know, we're looking at massive financial disruption to people's lives, increase in unemployment, desperation.

You know, these are all things that are going to accelerate potential property loss and asset loss. You know, having a surveillance system that's up to date and having access control is up to date. I mean, this has got to be a pretty major step for most companies and for most business owners thinking about how do they how do they protect and maintain their operations. I mean, what are you guys seeing in terms of trends or, you know, expectations of of the future from the industry?

Yeah. That's that's a big question. So, I mean, frankly, being able to, right now, save people the upfront expense of generally getting these systems in. There's there's a big cost upfront to get the stuff in generally. You know, we operate more in a in a as a service model, so there's not a major out of pocket when we deploy a system for for these organizations.

So, you know, the the good and the bad and the ugly of it is when when times get rough, and and times change and people have a lot of questions in their mind, they do things they wouldn't normally do. Right? Business owners still have to protect themselves, but cash is kinda king for some companies right right now. So they don't wanna do large expenses out of pocket, but they still have these safety and these security challenges. So we have ways to just literally turn that into an entire just OPEX spend and delay that massive cash out of pocket while still protecting their workplace.

Right? Keeping people safe, keeping people healthy. So we really get into a lot of, frankly, powerful solutions driven by machine learning and and artificial intelligence and and really computer vision and things like that are really changing how we look at security. It's it's no longer just safety via security. It's it's safety via the artificial intelligence.

You can truly say, hey. A camera can enforce if people are social distancing or not. Right? We can actually identify if people are keeping space from each other, and guess what? We can trigger proactive audio alerts to enforce those kinds of things.

So instead of having site managers, plant managers, whoever else trying to keep crowds dispersed and and people we're we're social people natively. Right? People just want to interact with each other. So, unfortunately, we all have to keep that in mind, but it's it's easy to just do it without thinking about it. Right?

Especially when you are getting back to work. So we can literally outside of what's going on right now, there's all kinds of ways. Operationally, we can use computer vision to enhance operations and and smooth workflows. But especially right now, there's there's some really massive ways to help out with the the challenges we currently face by leveraging these types of technologies.

It's an interesting example. I mean, computer vision, as you talk about spacing and and automated alerts, I mean, that my mind kinda goes 2 places. The the technologist is like, oh, that's cool. And then the other side is like, wow, it's a little big, you know, big brother ish. Right?

You know, what would my reaction be if I was somewhere? But there's yeah. The other other examples I've seen with this so far are, you know, infrared cameras doing temperature, you know, detection and variance where, you know, lobby cams or entrance locations can have a sensor that's unobtrusively, you know, monitoring, is somebody warm? Is that an indicator that maybe they should they should not be there? I mean, how you know, are you seeing those roll out and customers asking you about these types of things?

Yeah. It's massive how much demand there is for that type of solution, and and we like to just be very transparent as an organization. You know, we we are in a lot of spotlights, so we'd like to just give I guess, tell people what it is and what it isn't and and be responsible about how we approach it. Thermal technology can be massively effective if done the right way, and organizations leverage that technology in the right way, and that they have honest partners consulting with them on how to deliver those solutions. You know, we see stuff out there that's just looking for the highest point of temperature on a face.

And if it's over a certain threshold, you know, they they'll give you a couple of spare degrees where there's kinda some risk there. Right? But they don't wanna be too prohibitive. But they're just looking for the highest temperature on a face, and that's that's dangerous in a lot of ways. Right?

There's a lot of environmental factors and a lot of different things about that that can be very risky. We don't ever just kinda knee jerk deploy solutions. We spend an immense amount of money in r and d, actually testing this stuff and and having beta customers and things like that. So we've gotten a ton of feedback on how kinda how to do this properly. But, again, just looking for the highest temperature on a face and pulling people out of line for that, it's it's dangerous in some ways for the organization for for liability purposes.

We take it a lot further. We're actually looking, and and leveraging and testing machine learning based thermal technology that's not just looking for one high temp on a face, but actually comparing and contrasting all the different areas on a face. So what is the temperature at the ears, on the forehead, on the inner eye, the nose, the you know, all those different areas. And we're using machine learning to look for patterns and trends that really can outline if someone is even pre symptomatic, not just asymptomatic. Right?

We the we all know, even with this, the scary part is someone can be contagious and spreading it around. Most of the solutions that we're seeing out there, those people can be asymptomatic and and spreading that. By the time they're detecting it by just looking at the highest temperature on a face, they could've already spread that to everybody and then you've kinda defeated the purpose. It's it's kinda too late. Using machine learning and identifying different areas of the, and and comparing and contrasting different numbers, you can get a lot closer to presymptomatic, which is really before I should be highly contagious and and spreading something like this without knowing it.

So there's there's just a massive difference on how these are deployed. And, unfortunately, you know, I hate to say it, I've seen a lot of stuff that, you know, in my opinion, just looks somewhat irresponsible. So people should be cognizant of that and and aware of that and and make smart decisions and really understand what what they're doing. You know, we're all very eager to get back to work, but there's there's liabilities and things to be very aware of and just sensitivities even in general about that kind of thing. So they are great solutions.

I've just seen some that are unfortunately not really made for what they're doing and they're just you know, there's some people that are they think they're helping. To me, I would I would argue that a little bit.

So so you mentioned, you know, as a service and and moving from a CapEx to an OpEx model, access control systems, you know, key fob integration, surveillance cameras. I mean, these are very expensive items usually for a company. So how and they're also complicated to install. You know, this is something that requires a lot of physical on-site work. I mean, how do you actually can you, you know, scope this with a with a customer, identify what it is that they actually need or what they're trying to achieve, and perform the installation.

I mean, what does that process look like for you?

Yeah. So we have a dedicated team of of design engineers that will generally, along with, like, an account manager, engage and understand what are all the challenges, what does the entire business look like top to bottom. We do everything from gathering floor plans, you know, taking measurements. We understand we look at pixel density, which is ultimately we can break it down to be really simple. Do I need high details of a face?

Am I just trying to recognize somebody that I know? You know, now that I know Max and I and I'm and I've interacted with him, now I recognize him. And then or am I just trying to detect movement in an area where it shouldn't be? Am I trying to detect that 2 people are too close to each other? Those are all very different solutions that are delivered, and they all have different costs and benefits and different things like that.

So we have a team of design engineers that understands the entire organization, basically, soup to nuts. And from a centralized place, they meet with stakeholders to say, okay. What are the needs? What would be a good to have versus, you know, what's realistic in in many cases? And then work towards a standardization.

It can be really tough to to just take everything on in in little bits and bites, but work towards achieving those organizational goals from a a higher level, and then create that standard that can be rolled out from the first site to the next 500 if needed or the next 3 if needed, and really take a a standardized approach to that, that goes a long way. That I'll I'll give a lot of props to my design engineers. They they work day and night to help people kinda unravel some really complex stuff. And then another shout out to our partner network, we have about a 1000 installation companies across North America that are locally licensed in each in each state. They know how to get permits from each city, all that kind of stuff, and they're certified on how to properly install that stuff.

Right? Cameras are not like most electronics. Most electronics, you're not trying to keep out in the wind and the rain and the sleet and the hail, and you you can't really take those installations lightly. You know, we see, for lack of better term, guys that work out of their vans that that install some of this stuff. And it's like, man, is that thing really gonna run for 10 to 12 years?

Because that's kind of the life expectancy out of some of this technology. And maybe the technology lifespan is shorter, you know, so we have life cycle conversations with customers on. Yeah. That camera might last you 12 years, but, you know, for technology reasons, bandwidth savings, storage savings, cost savings, maybe refreshing every 5, 6 years is more advantageous. Those are all conversations that we just pull together, be very transparent, show to the customers, you know, identify their problems, and then work through those things, and it's executed very well.

This is a big it depends question, I'm sure. Can you give me a ballpark on on what this cost? I mean, if we're talking about access control or surveillance, you know, how would somebody under you know, make an initial decision? Is this a path they wanna go down or not and what they should be expecting to get into?

Yeah. So it depends. You're you're certainly correct there. You know, I will say let's just take it from an a a capital expense approach because sometimes that's easier to understand. But there's cameras as low as 150, $200 that people would generally buy.

And then, you know, we work in some critical infrastructure and and industrial spaces where they are buying explosion proof thermal cameras that are 25 to $30,000 per camera. Right? So it really depends. But, you know, you can look at we speak with storage. Let's just say cloud storage, for example.

Instead of going out and buying expensive storage arrays and keeping that on-site and worrying about hard drive failures and all all these other single points of failure. Right? There's a lot of single points of failure in a traditional on premise system. How long do you want that footage in the cloud? Frankly, the the cloud's not gonna lose data like an on premise appliance can be.

Nobody can just take it. We get calls from customers all the time. Someone stole my recording box, and now I have nothing. They they took a bunch of assets, and guess what the recordings went with it. Can't really steal the cloud in that way.

So we we talk about is there a compliance. Right? Is there some kind of PCI compliance where you're looking at 60, 90 days, some pretty, you know, longer term storage? Some customers have had long histories of false, like, slip fall litigation where they're concerned about keeping footage for a year. And for them, if it keeps them on a court, it's totally worth doing that.

Well, you talk about that amount of storage. That is far cheaper in the hyperscale cloud than it is to buy those boxes. Right? Especially when you have 10 sites that you wanna do that at. Don't buy those 10 boxes.

Leverage the cloud. The most common storage time though is is 2 to 4 weeks. So a month, we hear all the time. How much is it to keep stuff for a month? And it again, it does depend greatly on the endpoint, you know, how complex does that camera need to be to to serve the organization.

But you can kinda ballpark for a a cloud camera, you know, $20.20 per camera per month is a fair kinda median price, you know, which is we think is crazy aggressive, frankly, where where if you look at the cost of, like, a hosted phone system, right, those are commonly $20 per phone per month and that's audio. Right? In our case, we're actually streaming HD video and storing video every second of the day for for $20 a month. You know, that's that's pretty aggressive. So it does depend.

Access control can can vary as well, but that's a pretty good ballpark number, I would say, for a lot of customers for a a starting point on just, jeez, what does this cost me?

So for somebody looking at this, I mean, their process would be, you know, talk to you, get floor plans, have a conversation of what they're trying to protect, what they really care about, you know, what their expectations in in in storage ranges are. I mean, there's a there's a bunch of different knobs you've kind of explained. And then from there, you you can you come back and you say, okay, this is this is this is what your your cost would be. And do you want more, or do you want less? And and then from there, they say yes, and you go great and schedule install.

I mean, is that I mean, it's a very simplification of, of the process.

It yeah. It is actually a good way to simplify it. You know, there there'll generally be an actual site walk at some point in there just to make sure, hey, we don't run into some kind of, like, really thick firewall that's gonna be a nightmare to get wires through, and we have to route a different way or whatever else. Right? So that's at some point, we'll get that on-site technician in there just to really do a under the hood look.

But from a what are your needs, you know, how is it designed, all that kind of stuff, well, generally, we'll do that right through things, you know, webinars and and reviewing of of floor plans, things like that. And we get we we're able to deliver in a high level by going that method by leveraging, you know, experts that are a little more central. Instead of having to have thousands and thousands of experts out on the streets, we have that core centralized group of experts that can handle all that stuff, and then we have our local partners go in and just verify there's no weird wiring issues that we're gonna run into or anything else.

Awesome. Jacob, thank you so much for your time.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Max. I appreciate it. And everybody stay stay healthy and stay safe.

Thanks for joining the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven't heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visit us at clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.