A Leader in Cost-Effective “End-To-End” Video Surveillance, Smartvue Delivers Market Proven Commercial, Residential and IoT Video Solutions

With the advent of Cloud technology, the notion of connecting any and every device to the Internet with an on and off switch became a reality. No longer is the Internet confined to computers and mobile devices, it is now available to nearly every device that has an IP address, from microwaves and refrigerators to wearable devices and headphones. As IoT develops, the relationship is between people-people, people-things, and things-things creating the opportunity to connect billions of devices. Founded in 1998, Smartvue brings IoT video solutions to market faster, at less cost and less risk.

Based in Nashville, Tennessee, The Company’s IoT video and cloud surveillance services transform how Telco, cable, security, storage, device manufacturers, and other industries create new value for their customers and new revenue for themselves. It has the industry’s leading portfolio of 60 utility patents (including patents in China as well as Europe). The end-to-end Smartvue platform as a service (PaaS) supports connected devices that require video capture, security, transport, cloud storage, management, and distribution in a simple and elegant interface, cost-effectively delivered at scale worldwide to almost any device.

Let’s Talk Turkey With Martin Renkis, Founder And CEO

What led to the inception of the company?

My passion was always been to make complex technologies elegantly simple and with my experience with online learning, I naturally decided that enabling video surveillance over the internet and in turn enabling video for any connected device was a fun and massive problem to solve. It also has the benefit of making the world a safer place.

Could you brief us about your first product launch?

Wow! Our first product was launched in 1999 and it won the Best of Show award at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was a wireless camera that spoke to a base station that connected to the internet and let you remotely view video. Imagine using your 24k modem to connect to the internet and watch a postage stamp size video at three frames per second! We had an offer from Tyco to buy the company, but I saw the opportunity for network enabled surveillance to be much bigger than anything we had accomplished at that time.

Can you share the experience of your first project roll on?

Not so good! Actually it was practically a failure. Internet connections were slow and un-reliable so the solution was too. In addition, wi-fi had not been commercialized yet and our wireless was completely insecure because the technology for that was not available yet. We made enough money to keep the light on.

What were the grounds on which you have expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

Smartvue was a leader in cloud video surveillance systems and used our decade of experience in that technology market to develop the first IoT video platform which can be quickly and easily embedded into any device with a sensor and enable our customers to monetize video services. We consistently do this faster, more securely, and more cost effectively then our customers can do it themselves.

How has the response been from your customers and how have they motivated you to grow the company?

We are nothing without our customers. We have been extremely lucky to work with amazing people at Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Ryobi, and Google among many other customers. Our gift is to take their ideas and requirements and leverage our experience and technologies to create solutions that exceed their needs. We have expanded our cloud platform to support cloud to cloud APIs and also extended our embedded technologies to work in IoT devices from cameras to garage door openers.

Are there any trigger factors or events that have played key roles in shaping your organization’s road map?

We have been blessed with trigger events which include:

• Early investments (Mike Shmerling, Crom Carmichael, family and friends)
• New board members (Art Laffer, David Dorman, Bert Ellis, Dan Knotts)
• Phenomenal customers (people like Andy Rubin and UrsHoezle and companies like Time Warner, Cox, Ryobi, Google)
• Amazing partnerships (HPE, Ayla, Microsoft)

Future Prospects of Smartvue

The company is releasing the next generation of its platform shortly. This will include the most robust video sensor device and services management platform in the world. Smartvue calls it “Commandvue” and it will enable its customers to manage thousands of video devices from anywhere around the world using one pane of glass (one web browser interface). They will be able to test latency, network speed, update firmware, provision users, provision devices, see sensor utilization, view total network utilization and manage the entire video experience for their customers. Smartvue is also expanding its efforts with AI, video analytics, and machine learning as well as speeding up its process to get new customers from idea to revenue with end to end systems that include billing. Smartvue aspires to become the world’s largest IoT video network and power video services for 10 million connected devices by the year 2020.

Clients Stellar Testimonials

“Smartvue makes the world a safer place with cost-effective and scalable cloud video services.”

- Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

“Because of their expertise, scalability, and focus on security, Smartvue was selected to provide video services for HPE IoT.”

- Nigel Upton, Senior Director, Hewlett-Packard

Greet the man behind the success of Smartvue

Martin Renkis, Founder and CEO: Renkis was the founder of Trainersoft, one of the leading e-learning platform companies, which is now owned by IBM. He is an inventor with a portfolio of more than 60 patents to his name and an innovator in the IoT industry having created the largest privately held IoT video network, which uploads more video than YouTube every day. Renkis is an alumnus of Denison University.

“We empower video surveillance for almost any device, on any network, anywhere in the world. We are committed to our vision to make the world a safer place with amazing technologies that are elegantly simple.”