In January 2006, Checkpoint Access Control Group began operating asSielox, Runnemede, N.J. The company markets Pinnacle systems software, LANLink and AC-1200 Series 32-bit controllers, and the Performa and Mirage readers and cards. And, according to the company, all the products and programs continue to be backed by the technical, sales, engineering and marketing employees from Checkpoint’s Access Control Group. Sielox is headed by Karen Evans, president and general manager, and a 14-year Checkpoint employee.

In addition to the name change, Sielox announced their Pinnacle access control system and controllers to be Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201) compliant.

The company also entered a strategic alliance with Costar Video Systems, a video surveillance equipment supplier. As a distributor of Costar products, Sielox is able to further extend integration capabilities for its customers. For more information about Sielox, visitwww.sielox.com.


A move in July 2006 from Columbia, S.C., to New York City increased business substantially forMobotix Corp., a manufacturer of IP video camera systems that was founded in 1999 in Kaiserslautern, Federal Republic of Germany, by Ralf Hinkel, CEO.

Hinkel had a company that worked with laser technology that he sold, but he became bored with retirement and founded Mobotix to take advantage of the higher resolution available from IP cameras, explained Wolfgang Ritter, the company’s director of U.S. sales. “It took one-and-a-half years to show the product,” Ritter noted. At the first trade shows the company attended in 2000 and 2001, the technology was still relatively new.

“The big vendors smiled at us and said, they have a toy here, and they will never make it,” Ritter maintained. “Nobody is smiling anymore. Now we have sold 130,000 of these cameras.

“Everybody has seen a camera with 960 lines of resolution and sees the cost and technological advantages, and they’ll never step back to old technology,” Ritter insisted. To find out more about Mobotix, visitwww.mobotix.com.