DVR drives success in security

Industry

Published: 10 Apr. 2008, 23:07

DVR drives success in security

Kim Young-dal, CEO of IDIS Company

You can find digital video recorders, or DVRs, used in surveillance in a number of places around the world. The United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas uses them, as do the Eurostar trains running across Western Europe, Australia’s Sydney Opera House and Pudong International Airport in Shanghai. And in all these places, these DVRs are Korean-made.
The firm that makes them, IDIS Company, holds the world’s top position in sales of DVRs, which combine a video surveillance system with several other functions. DVRs compress, record and retrieve images recorded by closed-circuit TV cameras.
“We have become the strongest in the global security facilities market because we have staked all on the narrow field, which we chose on the thought we would do it the best,” said Kim Young-dal, chief executive officer of IDIS. “The security facilities market matches a small technology start-up with our high-quality workforce for research and development.”
He added the size of the worldwide security market is only $1.6 billion, so it is not easy for a large company to enter the market.
Kim established IDIS in 1997, when he was in a doctoral program of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, the nation’s leading college of science and engineering. That was during the dot-com boom. At that time, Lee Hae-jin, Kim’s schoolmate in college, founded Naver, which has grown into the nation’s most-visited Internet portal. Kim’s younger classmate, Kim Jeong-ju, set up Nexon, the online game provider.
“When I said I would set up a security facilities company, my acquaintances asked me why I was eying an old-fashioned business. But I was confident that security facilities, which were mostly analog, would be digitalized soon.”
Sure enough, the security facilities market rapidly digitized. Then IDIS released DVR, which can record images for 30 days with a 40 gigabyte hard disk, instead of analog VCRs. The company is also the first in the world to develop a DVR that sounds an alarm if it detects abnormal movements.
The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States brought about a surge in demand for the company’s new DVRs. In 2002 and 2004, Forbes magazine selected IDIS as one of the best companies worth less than $1 billion.
When asked whether the expanding security facility market is ushering in a new era of “Big Brother” a la Orwell’s “1984,” Kim said, “Security facilities aren’t just for watching people, but also for various services and conveniences.” For example, he said, DVRs help fewer clerks efficiently manage big stores.
“Recently, it’s been difficult to find a creative technology start-up,” Kim said. He said that for a Korean company to succeed, 40 percent of resources must be devoted to hardware, and 60 perfect software.

By Chang Chung-hoon JoongAng Ilbo [symoon@joongang.co.kr]