Wheelings and Dealings: Security Entrepreneur Nabs Brivo for $50 Million

Eagle Eye Networks CEO and Barracuda Networks (News - Alert) founder Dean Drako is expanding his reach in cloud surveillance and security with the acquisition of Brivo, for $50 million.

As Brivo’s owner, Drako will serve as the company’s chairman, and Steve Van Till, Brivo’s president and CEO, will continue leading the company.

Brivo makes an access control system—which is to say, it’s a physical security solution for protecting access to buildings. It counts 6 million users and more than 100,000 “access points,”—i.e. doors, windows etc. But its management suite is the secret sauce—it offers centralized control via the cloud, with graphical dashboards that fit the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, which can scale to address enterprise needs. Critically, it also has a suite of APIs for integrating other functionality into the platform. This is one of the main aspects that caught Drako’s eye, he said.

In particular, Drako said that he sees the opportunity to accelerate the cloud technology shift already underway in the physical security industry by combining Brivo’s cloud access control with his cloud video surveillance company, Eagle Eye Networks.

“My goal was to acquire the physical security industry’s best access control system,” Drako said. “Brivo’s true cloud architecture and open API approach put it a generation ahead of other access-control systems. Cloud solutions provide exceptional benefits, and Brivo is clearly the market and technology leader. Brivo is also committed to strong, long-standing relationships with its channel partners, which I believe is the best strategy for delivering extremely high customer satisfaction.”

To make use of this extensibility, Brivo has already developed an integrated solution unifying the Brivo OnAir (News - Alert) cloud-based access control with Eagle Eye’s camera system. The result is a cloud-based video surveillance and access control solution which is bi-directionally integrated using the open APIs from both companies. Users can have video verification of door events, with natively viewable and searchable video, and Brivo OnAir door events will appear within the Eagle Eye Security Camera VMS.

 “We are extremely excited that Dean Drako has acquired Brivo and is serving as chairman. In addition to Dean’s experience founding and leading Barracuda Networks to be a multi-billion dollar company, he has grown his latest company, Eagle Eye Networks, to be the technology leader in cloud video surveillance,” said Steve Van Till, president and CEO at Brivo. “We both share the vision of delivering the tremendous advantages of cloud-based systems to our customers.”