Panasonic Corporation, Osaka, announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire all shares of Houston-based Video Insight Inc., a developer of video management software, as part of its strategy to expand business opportunities for both companies in the education market in North America. Panasonic Group has set a clear target of reaching 10 trillion yen in sales by 2018; and B2B solutions, including security systems and video surveillance, will play an important part in achieving this high growth globally.

Video Insight, founded in 2002, provides enterprise-class video management solutions for security systems to more than 25,000 customers in the financial, government, retail, and transportation sectors as well as to 6,500 schools and campuses.

“We’re excited and honored to partner with the Panasonic Group,” said Video Insight Chief Executive Officer J. Robert Shaw. “We believe this partnership will help us accelerate innovation, enhance product development and allow us to provide our customers with better security solutions for years to come.”

As customer needs in the video surveillance market become more diversified, video management software with the ability to easily integrate multiple devices will become even more important. Adding Video Insight to the Panasonic Group enhances the Panasonic portfolio and broadens its reach into education, according to a press release by the Panasonic Group.

As part of the agreement, Video Insight will remain under the leadership of its founders, Shaw and James Whitcomb, to continue to evolve the open platform system, which to date supports more than 2,500 camera models from more than 100 manufacturers and integrates across the most popular access control platforms, according to the news announcement.

 Los Angeles-based Imperial Capital represented Video Insight Inc.