Helping security devices speak

Ask Kekin A. Shah about his Cranston company, Shanix Inc., and it won’t be long before he says there are some things he just can’t discuss.
You see, the company designs and installs complex security systems that use networks of cameras, communications and other high-tech gadgets. Shanix’s client list is sprinkled with secretive defensive contractors and sensitive locations, including a nuclear power plant.
“They don’t want people to know about the security,” Shah said recently, explaining why he can’t publicly talk about some of the company’s jobs. “We work in a lot of sensitive areas.”
Among the clients the company can talk about:
• The Lifespan campus in Providence that includes Rhode Island Hospital, where hundreds of Shanix-installed cameras keep an eye on things and access cards open gates and doors.
• New Bedford Housing Authority, where the security system is integrated with the city police department’s computers and allows officers direct access to images from authority cameras.
• Local law enforcement agencies, Brown University, Ocean State Job Lot and Pantry Inc., a 2,000-location convenience store chain in the Southeast.
They all come to Shanix looking for what Shah says his company excels at: designing computer-based security systems that tie together components such as cameras, door locks and “access control” devices that allow fingerprint, retina or facial recognition.
“We’re an integrator,” explained Don T. Volino, Shanix general director. “We make [parts of] the system talk to each other. It sounds simple but that’s what separates us from the competition.”
That’s not all that’s different about Shanix.
About four years ago, the company started designing and installing advanced audio/visual systems that can be used in the classroom and the corporate boardroom.
In a recent demonstration, Shanix technician Whit Johnson showed off the capabilities of a Smart Board, an interactive 77-inch white board manufactured by Smart Technologies that allows a user to assemble and display complex presentations by touching fingers to the board.
The A/V division is getting to be a larger percentage of the total business. “The blackboards in the classroom are going away and the Smart Boards are taking their place,” Shah said.
Shanix has certainly come a long way since Shah started the business in 1981.
He had previously worked at another company installing closed-circuit TV systems for other businesses, such as discount retailer Ann & Hope.
When the company where Shah worked closed because of financial difficulties in other divisions, he saw an opportunity. Shah started Shanix, designing and installing simple closed- circuit TV security systems.
Shanix doesn’t develop and manufacture the security components; it designs how those components will be used with each client, then performs the programming and installation, and handles future servicing.
Shah said he’s amazed at the pace of change in the industry.
It’s gone from grainy black and white images recorded on magnetic tapes that had to be labeled and stored to digital cameras that save data on computers and allow for analysis unheard of just a few years ago.
Shanix technicians talk of matrix switching and video analytical software and wireless mesh technology.
Shah said security systems are relying less and less on humans as computers are making a lot of the decisions on their own. That trend is only going to increase, Shah said.
Case in point: There’s software available where camera images at an airport, for instance, can be instantaneously analyzed by a computer for suspicious movements among passengers. “It raises a red flag someplace, and a human can be alerted,” Shah said.
That use of cameras and computers is enough to make a civil liberties lawyer wince.
But Shah said this type of technology is frequently used in European. “We have faced less terrorism here,” he said in explaining the resistance to using it in the United States.
And Shah noted that security systems have proved to be instrumental for safety in places such as college campuses. A student can call the security office and have someone watching them when they return to the dorm after a late-night study session.
“They can follow that person on cameras all the way to their destination without having to leave their seat,” Shah said. •
company profile: SHANIX INC.
OWNER: Kekin A. Shah, president
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Security and audio/visual systems designer and
integrator
LOCATION: 40 Worthington Road, Cranston
EMPLOYEES: 26
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1981
ANNUAL SALES: WND