Fibrenetix has announced a significant hire with Peter Biltsted joining as Global Sales Director to help grow the manufacturer’s Middle East operations. Biltsted has a significant reputation in the region having helped to grow the Milestone brand in the territory.
“I was impressed with the respect Peter Biltsted has in the industry, especially in the Middle East,” noted Fibrenetix CEO, Jes Nagel. “He did a fantastic job building Milestone to what it is today in the Middle East.
“When Peter Biltsted moved back to Denmark I saw it as great opportunity to work with PB and again,” he continued. “Fibrenetix is currently growing at a double-digit rate and to sustain this and build an infrastructure to support this high growth rate, we need people like Peter Biltsted and his old colleague Søren Kannov, who have done it before and immediately could make a difference.”
“In my role as Regional Director for Milestone I saw many small and large hardware companies all trying to find a space in an already crowdy market,” added Peter Biltsted. “Fibrenetix always stood out as something different. Here was a small Danish company with a fraction of R&D money, but that did not stop them coming up with new innovative technologies and a different approach to offering high quality and reliable solutions based on the latest technology available.
“When Fibrenetix’ CEO approached me with his vision for the company and especially the new Mobility platform it has developed, I saw many similarities with Milestone in the early days when we were building a hugely successful company,” he continued. “I became very excited again and wanted to help Fibrenetix the same way I did in the early years with Milestone. I get excited about work when I believe in the products, the company vision but most of all when I feel I can make a difference.”
With Biltsted leading the company in the region, Nagel can certainly see a strong future for Fibrenetix in the Middle East. “The general security market in the Middle East is still growing, but the ‘Klondike’ market conditions we had years ago is gone,” reflected the CEO. “Now we see a market which is mature, and the growth rates have slowed down. Customers are more skilled and knowledgeable. They now require high-quality and reliable products, which can be scaled to meet future legal requirements from the authorities. In the next few years, customers will no longer just buy a product which fulfils today’s requirement and then go out and replace all the hardware again when the legislation changes. The challenge for the industry is to build scalable solutions which are future proof.”
“I believe that we also will continue to see that companies using technology in a ‘smart’ way to reduce the overall cost for the end user will be the winners going forward,” added Biltsted. “The large US-based companies are like supertankers – it takes them years to change the technology. They’ve build their business model around a huge amount of software which not only slows down the systems but also costs a lot of money in software maintenance fees. They have the benefit of having large support and sales organisations – but a CCTV solution should not need to be maintained by a huge support team. So, the customer is paying for something they really shouldn’t need.”
Smart solutions are seen as the way forward for the company. “Mobility is one of the fastest growing areas in the security industry – but we have only seen the beginning of this emerging market, reason being that most suppliers only offer some very basic functionality,” noted Biltsted. “All solutions are proprietary. What Fibrenetix offers is an open platform integrating video surveillance, GPS tracking and full integration with a stationary control room. Fibrenetix has taken the same approach as Milestone and created an open platform – meaning our new Smart Vehicle Management system fully integrations into the customer’s existing control room running Genetec, Milestone and soon to come, other VMS’.”
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