New Member Profile: Cardinal Peak

Jeff Doria, Cardinal Peak

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member Cardinal Peak is a contract engineering firm specializing in video management systems (VMS), digital signal processing, the Internet of Things, embedded electronics, cloud infrastructure and mobile app development. Founded in 2002, Cardinal Peak is headquartered near Boulder, Colorado, and serves clients throughout North America.

SIA spoke with Jeff Doria, solutions manager at Cardinal Peak, about the company, the security industry and working with SIA.

SIA: Tell us the story of your company.

Jeff Doria: Cardinal Peak has helped 300+ clients solve difficult technical problems in developing their products. Some examples of our security industry successes are the S2 Security mobile app, LockState embedded wireless electronics and the CaseCracker VMS – an interview room audio and video recording solution for the law enforcement, security, clinical and education markets developed by Cardinal Peak and then spun off into a separate company.

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

JD: What makes us unique is that we don’t do just VMS, DSP, hardware, firmware or mobile apps – we do them all. We can work with customers to ensure seamless system integration, going from high-level product planning to detailed execution. 

What’s something we might not know about your company – or something new you’re doing in security?

JD: Cardinal Peak is an Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS) and Amazon Alexa mobile accessory solution provider; we have helped customers develop Alexa-compatible products, and in doing so we have built relationships with the Amazon Alexa team and are now quite familiar with their process and procedures. We are an Amazon AVS design partner. We see these voice recognition skills as another valuable tool in our tool box, especially considering the confluence of smart home and security technologies.

SIA: What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

JD: Cardinal Peak’s goal is to be known as the go-to product engineering firm for the security industry. Paramount to this vision is our commitment to maintaining the highest level of security and confidentiality, as we are trusted with our clients’ intellectual property and trade secrets.

SIA: What do you think are the biggest opportunities in the security industry right now?

JD: For Cardinal Peak the opportunity is the ever-increasing pressure for quicker product development cycles/reduced time to market in an era of new combinations of technologies and a tight labor market.       Often, it makes sense for our clients to hire an industry-experienced, fully staffed engineering team rather than build one from the ground up. Another situation where we can bring value is when a client has a solid team but simply too many projects to handle; Cardinal Peak is brought in to take on those projects that would otherwise get pushed out or not done at all.

We take product testing very seriously, which is why 20 percent of our staff are in our quality assurance test group. Testing isn’t always a big part of the flashy sales pitch, but is very important when you are developing products that help protect lives and property.

SIA: What are the biggest challenges facing your company and/or others in the security industry?

JD: There is no shortage of innovative ideas in the industry, but many of these ideas require specialized, hard-to-find engineering skills to bring them to fruition. Cardinal Peak has the skills and experience to help our customers overcome these engineering challenges.

SIA: What do you enjoy most about being at your company – and in the security industry?

JD: What I enjoy most about being at Cardinal Peak is working with a group of hot-shot engineers who are sincere about helping our customers; this is a great situation to be in as a sales person.

Working in the security industry is a challenge for the same reason that it is exciting – it is the confluence of video, audio, wireless and cloud technologies being combined as never before. Being able to see how these things can fit together as opposed to why they shouldn’t is the real fun of it.

SIA: What does SIA offer that is most important to you/your company? And what do you most hope to get out of your membership?

JD: SIA membership offers Cardinal Peak the opportunity to share our skill and experience and assist other SIA members in developing ever more complex products, thus helping to drive innovation in the security industry.

SIA: How does your organization engage with SIA? What are your plans for involvement in the next year?

JD: We will attend ISC East and West; I look forward to walking the floor and talking with the exhibitors about challenges with their current products, new development, etc.

Learn more about Cardinal Peak.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association (SIA).