SecurTek Monitoring Solutions Inc. has acquired approximately 7,500 wholesale and retail accounts from Aurora, Ont.-based Maximum Monitoring Services Ltd. for $1.4 million. It becomes SecurTek's first monitoring station in Ontario.
Maximum Monitoring, which is a ULC-listed central monitoring station based in Aurora, a Toronto suburb about 40 minutes north of the city, will become an authorized dealer for
SecurTek, operating under the name of SecureVision View Inc. The retail customers will continue to be served by Maximum, now operating under the name of SecureVision View Inc.
Maximum’s owner, Bob Miller, who has owned the central station for the last 10 years, says the deal is a win for both parties. SecurTek has been looking to establish a monitoring presence in Ontario and he is interested in growing the offsite video business he has built called SecureVision View, essentially a video verification system.
“Our partnership with SecurTek offers SecureVision View an opportunity to expand our products on a national basis and insures the continued excellence in monitoring and service for our customers,” said Miller.
With Secure Vision View, upon receipt of an alarm, the video application displays the alarm information to the user and sends a command to the operator’s Video Viewer application to start video viewing. The Video Viewer application displays video for the account in an alarm condition. In a typical configuration, each monitoring operator has both an alarm monitoring screen and a separate screen dedicated to the video viewer application.
"We incorporate the cameras to the servers, not a DVR. When an alarm goes off in a building, the image pops up on the screen in the monitoring station and the operator can watch the break-in in process. There’s also an application for the iPhone and iPad so the client can also watch streaming video of the situation and let us know if we should take action or whether it’s someone known to them," says Miller.
SecureVision View has taken on some large national retail customers and Miller says he needed to expand the company’s monitoring footprint across the country so the deal with SecurTek, a SaskTel company, was a good fit.
"We needed national assistance and to grow the business we needed the ability to have access to other monitoring centres," he says, adding, "The best part of this deal is we become their dealer and when we sell a new account we hand it to them."
The entry of SecurTek into the Ontario market is a significant development in the industry.
“SecurTek continues to be a Saskatchewan success story and this acquisition further supports our strategy of growing our business and expanding our market reach,” said Robert Watson, SaskTel President and CEO, in a statement. “SecurTek has been a profitable subsidiary of SaskTel since 2002. It is acquisitions such as this, along with new customer account growth, that ensure SecurTek’s financial position remains strong.”
“This acquisition positions SecurTek to thrive in the monitoring industry’s competitive market and achieve economies of scale that will return a profit to SecurTek’s parent company, SaskTel,” added Watson.
