Solution Providers See Developing Opportunity Behind Body-Worn Cameras For Law Enforcement

In an effort to provide more transparency within police departments, officers across the country are wearing small video cameras to record every moment they're on duty, creating a growing market opportunity for solution providers supporting, securing and logging the data they produce.

Hardware sales are "just the tip of the iceberg" for solution providers, said David Heinemann, CEO of Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) Group, a Crawfordville, Fla.-based research organization focused on the criminal justice market.

Selling software, resolving networking issues and providing integration present the largest channel opportunities surrounding the cameras, he said. In addition, the cameras bring with them the need for high bandwidth, cloud storage and high-end security solutions.

[Related: Violence In Baltimore Sheds Light On IT Challenges Around Body Cameras]

"Many agencies are having to improve the bandwidth and improve security," Heinenmann said to an audience of solution providers earlier this month at the XChange SLED 2015 conference in Atlanta, which is produced by The Channel Company, publisher of CRN. "We're dealing with data that might be, at one point, criminal evidence, so there's a whole different level of security that you have to be concerned about and make sure there are as few opportunities as possible for the data to be altered in any way."

Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Department announced a $20 million pilot program to fund body-worn cameras for police departments nationwide. The program came after President Barack Obama proposed $250 million in funding for body-worn cameras in December. The opportunity surrounding those cameras has some partners seeing green.

"I think it's a huge opportunity," Dr. Robert Desman, director of business development for Atlanta-based Carceron Managed IT Services, told CRN in an interview. "It's so early. It's a reactive strategy right now. You haven't remotely seen the ceiling on this. All that's happening is people are saying, 'Well, for police department transparency, we need to do this.' So, basically, they're just out there shooting YouTube videos. ...The device itself is the foot-in-the-door offering, but the infrastructure that has to go along with it is enormous."

Taser International, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based manufacturer of electrical weapons, is a leading player in the body-worn camera market, according to CJIS Group, selling its cameras for $750 to $900 each. Other major manufacturers in the space include Seattle-based Vievu, and Lenexa, Kan.-based Digital Ally. As the market blooms, more big players will present themselves, Heinemann said.

Heinemann pointed to some current sales opportunities solution providers can strike on now.

Long Beach Police Department, which has about 900 officers, recently issued an RFP for 500 body-worn cameras. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which has roughly 9,000 officers, is piloting devices from several vendors and is expected to move forward in the process sometime next year. Miami-Dade Police Department and its 2,900 officers are considering an RFP that includes both body-worn cameras and cloud services. Cook County Sheriff's Office in Illinois, which has 6,000 officers, is piloting Taser cameras with an RFP, and Prince William County Police Department in Virginia is buying 500 body-worn cameras for its officers and is expected to spend in the range of $3 million on the project.

Solution providers recognize that it's early days for the body-worn camera space as a channel opportunity, and several said they believe it would behoove them to enter the market while it's still young.

Jack LaPan, vice president of customer engagement at Southfield, Mich.-based Apex Digital Solutions, views the constant logging of video evidence and the ability to secure it in a cloud solution as the crux of the market opportunity for solution providers.

"I think it's going to be a big market," LaPan, told CRN in an interview. "It is a small market, but it's going in that direction. ... That's big data, essentially. It's collecting that information, and, I think the key is, what do you do with it? Who has access to it? Because now you have the security issues. Now you are recording people, and who has access to that? I think that's pretty significant."

PUBLISHED MAY 27, 2015