Before my first ever visit to Japan this past November, courtesy of i-PRO’s global press trip — featuring 12 members of the security trade press from the U.S. and Europe — I had a few preconceived notions of what the country is most famous for: sushi, electronics, cherry blossoms and geishas, to name just a few. As someone who loves to travel and hadn’t been farther than North America in way too many years, I looked forward to taking in everything I could in just over a week, from the temples to the food, to the shopping, and more food. The experience did not disappoint.

But of course, the real purpose of the trip was to learn more about our host company and its journey to where it is today, along with where both i-PRO and the video space are headed in the future. That experience did not disappoint, either. 

After a courtesy day to acclimate to the time difference (14 hours in my case), we were greeted enthusiastically by several personnel waving traditional company welcome flags outside the entrance of i-PRO’s research and development center in Fukuoka, a seaside city in the Southwest of the country.

There, company CEO Masato Nakao touched on the company’s history as a division of the larger Panasonic Corporation, until 2019 when the company formerly split off and incorporated as i-PRO. 

“We were just one of many divisions of Panasonic,” he explained. “It is not always good to be protected under a big umbrella because each division was competing with global specialized companies.” For i-PRO in the security camera space, that meant the company fell behind the competition in both products and innovation, he added. 

Structural & Product Changes

Under Panasonic, the security division was tied to the larger corporate culture and priorities, which in the fast-paced world of video, put it at a disadvantage in the market. So in 2020, unencumbered by this more rigid structure, i-PRO set out to become more nimble, tech-forward and catch up with industry peers. 

First up, the company changed from a closed technology philosophy to an open one. “Panasonic was a huge corporation that liked to do everything inside the company,” Nakao said. “Panasonic is a solution provider not just a manufacturer,     and the security division had to comply with corporate policy.

“We changed that policy to an open policy. i-PRO is not a big company; we can’t do everything by ourselves. Of course we manufacture cameras and recorders; we have some analytics, but we partner with many others for AI solutions. …We do not insist on our own solutions. We partner with these vendors and systems integrators. This is the number one change since incorporation,” he added.

The second change was to implement what Nakao called “time-based competition,” changing development cycles to be faster and launch more models with shorter lead times.

This policy was elaborated on by Chief Product Officer Gerard Figols. “We were far behind the other manufacturers in the industry,” he says of the company when it first incorporated in 2019. “We changed our strategy based on the open policy and launched a lot of models over the past four years. We had to catch up because we were far behind in terms of lineup. … We spent four years catching up. We have gone from 54 models as Panasonic to 289 today.”

Of those, 231 are implementing AI technology at the edge, which is a key strategy for i-PRO. 

“Three keywords are driving the current security market: cloud, AI and cybersecurity,” Nakao said. “We are focusing our resources into two parts. One is edge AI IoT devices. … If you do analytics in the cloud there is a tremendous cost incurred. To improve the accuracy, each camera can contain its own AI model.”

Other recent developments the company highlighted included the implementation of Docker containers that allow partners to develop apps for the cameras similar to the way a smart phone operates, and the move towards proactive security with plug ins like Active Guard and a new partnership with Morpho that will look at the way people move, going beyond typical identifiers such as gender, clothing color and other physical characteristics.  

“Technology is helping us to move to being more proactive,” Figols told a small group in a breakout roundtable discussion. “In analog times there was no proactivity at all. CCTV was an insulated system. … With Edge AI we can utilize raw data at the edge, making the accuracy of analytics much higher because every pixel of data is there. There is no encoding.”

The Role of the Integrator Partner

The company also stressed the importance of the channel in its evolution. 

“At the end of the day our main goal is to make the integrator’s life easier,” Figols said. “i-PRO is aiming to be trusted, flexible and bold; otherwise there is no way to keep gaining and growing our business.”

The company has created a program called Sakura to expand its integrator partners, currently around 60 in the U.S. 

In a one-on-one interview, Nakao explained to SDM this program features a white glove approach for partners. “We are looking to enhance our level of training and education to integrators and end users,” he said. “We introduced our new program called Sakura for our lead integrators to show them how to use AI and other advanced technologies. We have hired a new team focusing on education and training for integrators.”

Nakao said the company aims to be at around 100 Sakura integrator partners within one year. The program is aimed initially at integrators specializing in “mission critical” verticals as well as education.

“We will continue to explore the edge of AI,” he continued. “We would like to build a business that increases the market for new technologies with our integrators and for our integrators.”

Another way they are working with integrators is to gather their valuable input. “We are doing a lot of roundtables with integrators to understand their main pain points,” Figols said. “Some of the outcomes we showed today came from integrators. At the end of the day, time is money. Any hour they can save when they are deploying a huge number of cameras helps. Three minutes isn’t massive, but with 1,000 cameras, that is a lot of time.”

Cultural Shifts

From the tour of the R&D facility demonstrating the intensive quality control testing and research on making sure the cameras have a clear vision of colors in all lighting conditions; to treating attendees to traditional Japanese Bento box lunches and showing us some of the cultural gems like the Kinkaku-Ji (“golden”) and Kiyomizu-dera temples in Kyoto (both not coincidentally protected by i-PRO cameras); to a multi-course traditional Japanese meal in Kyoto (one of the highlights of the trip) and an optional evening of Karaoke in Tokyo, one thread that ran through the entire event was the role that Japanese culture plays in how i-PRO approaches business. 

“There were many good things Panasonic had. We have the quality management system from Panasonic, which is a very rigid system,” Nakao said. “Our product reliability is well regarded and that culture of making reliable technology comes from our Panasonic time.”

Figols added, “Cameras are not just cameras anymore. They are IoT devices providing and generating data. It needs to be reliable, otherwise it is meaningless. All of our products are manufactured and designed in Japan. We are proud of being a Japanese manufacturer serving the global community.”

This is a role the company is taking seriously, establishing a comprehensive AI governance framework for ethical AI this past September to help ensure  all the developments they are doing comply with government standards in various parts of the world. “For 2025 we are working on certifying to international standards,” Figols added. 

Chief Product Ambassador Hiroshi (Huey) Sekiguchi mused on the ways i-PRO has changed over the past five years.

“Many traditional companies in Japan are weak on change,” he said. “Successful companies change. Non-adaptable companies struggle. We departed Panasonic and now we have new blood and new ideas to make the message clear that we don’t follow the rule just because there is a rule. … There is a new culture set in this company.”

One way they are demonstrating that is by taking a global approach both in their products and in their staffing, blending the old with the new.

“We have been talking about new technology trends and the future and made in Japan, but really we have been changing into a global organization, Sekiguchi said. “You don’t just see Japanese faces here.”

He credits Nakao’s leadership of the last five years with much of the success the company has had, from growing its product line and speeding up production, to moving technology to the edge and expanding the role of the camera.

“The foundation is here, but we are truly becoming a global organization with a cultural mindset of one team,” Sekiguchi said. “This leadership change is from Nakao-San’s vision to become more unique, with different, diverse ideas.”

Looking Ahead

The final work day was spent at the company’s Tokyo headquarters and experience center discussing these and other big picture concepts, like the future of security. 

“We talk about edge automation and what we see is this is not a camera anymore,” Sekiguchi said. “A camera takes pictures and videos. That is it. What we are doing now is the edge is getting smarter, not because of i-PRO but because of Ambarella (the chipset partner the company is using). A nano camera is a server. Now with eight teraflops of power to do tremendous processing beyond video … there is a lot of open space in that cameras. What we really need to look at is how we are going to use that camera beyond just security. That is what I see will accelerate.”

The official business portion ended with a new product announcement, the High Zoom Bullet cameras, bringing the total new products to 290 since 2020. 

Many attendees elected to stay on for an optional fun Tokyo tour the next day, and several of us extended our stays by a few days to a week to explore more of the country. 

For my part, while the cherry blossoms were not in season, and the only geishas in evidence were the abundance of tourists in rental costumes, I learned — courtesy of our hosts and in countless experiences each day — about other aspects of Japanese culture, such as the attention to detail (beautifully represented by some of the gorgeous food presentations), the politeness and emphasis on personal responsibility (it is rare to see a trash can in the wild as most Japanese take their trash home to dispose of), and the pride in producing a quality product, whether it is a perfectly shaped Nigiri sushi or the latest security camera.