Needham firm offers security in a tiny package

It's hard to imagine anyone scheming to steal the painting of dogs playing poker from the Needham offices of Sensicast Systems. But if someone was planning an art heist, they'd be in for a surprise.

The framed rendering of canine gamblers is linked to a wireless network that can instantly alert security if someone tries to lift it from the wall, touch it, or vandalize it with a can of spray paint. The painting also sends out hourly reports on the temperature and relative humidity of its environment, for conservation purposes.

Sensicast is at the forefront of bringing what are known as wireless sensor networks out of the research lab and into the real world. These networks allow tiny sensors to communicate with one another using very little power, and relay the data they collect back to a central computer. Several well-known art museums, including a pair of Harvard University's museums, have adopted Sensicast technology to monitor valuable works of art, with sometimes surprising results.

''We had one of our sensors on a Louis XIV chest of drawers that had just come back from a $10,000 restoration," says Paul Sereiko, chief executive of Sensicast. ''Every night at 8:30, the alarm would go off and tell security that someone was touching the object, even though the museum was closed." Upon investigating, the security staff discovered that the culprit was a member of the cleaning crew who was wiping down the drawers with a rag and a spritz of Pledge -- something the museum hadn't previously known about, and certainly didn't want.

Each sensor in the network costs about $450, and is about the size of a thin TV remote control. (The software that monitors the network costs extra.) They're powered by four AAA batteries, which can last as long as three years. Each hour, the sensor wakes up to send in a report on temperature and humidity, and then it goes back to sleep. If a painting is being touched or moved, though, the sensor affixed to it wakes up immediately to sound an alarm. The system can then direct closed-circuit cameras to focus on the specific part of a gallery where the alarm was set off. Sereiko says that his sensors are responsive enough to detect when a vandal is spray-painting or otherwise defacing a work of art, as has happened three times with Rembrandt's famous ''The Night Watch."

Museum security consultant Steve Keller says that most museums don't have security systems attached to individual works of art, and the few that are in place are ''relatively primitive." He envisions the Sensicast technology being especially useful during the day, when other alarm systems in a museum -- like those that sound when doors are opened -- are inactive. But he says the technology needs to get even smaller to be useful with a wide range of artwork. ''Right now, [their sensor] might not fit behind an Ansel Adams photograph, or a spoon on display," Keller says.

Sensicast is trying to shrink its sensors, and also identify applications outside of museums. This year, the company will install a wireless sensor network in a New Mexico state government building to monitor for poisonous chemicals or biological substances in the air. And the company is working with General Electric; Sereiko says that his sensors could be useful in industrial settings to keep tabs on how efficiently motors and machinery are operating, and report any anomalies.

The 17-person company raised a first round of $3 million in 2002; this spring, Sereiko is hoping to close a larger second round. He says that venture capitalists are more interested in the industrial uses of wireless sensors than in protecting priceless works of art; they feel that the Fortune 500 has deeper pockets than the nonprofit museum world.

Museums will provide an important early test for Sensicast, though -- is the wireless network reliable enough, and do wireless sensors provide enough value for the money when compared to traditional wired systems?

So far, the results are encouraging. That painting of the poker-playing hounds is still hanging safely at Sensicast headquarters - safe from vandals and would-be Thomas Crowns.

Yankee Group on the blockThe grapevine tells me that the former CFO of Lycos is close to a deal to buy the Yankee Group, a Boston-based technology forecasting firm, from Reuters Group. In February, Reuters sold another local unit, the Tower Group in Needham, to MasterCard International.

Howard Anderson started the Yankee Group in 1970, and the firm made its reputation by predicting the breakup of AT&T. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the company was widely respected for its analysis of the telecom landscape. But Yankee never really grasped the significance of the Internet, and another local forecasting firm, Forrester Research, started by ex-Yankee employee George Colony, eclipsed it.

Anderson sold Yankee in 1996 to Primark, an information services firm in Waltham (now part of Thomson Corp.), and left the company soon after to start YankeeTek Ventures, an investment firm. After failing in an attempt to take Yankee public, Primark unloaded the group to Reuters in 2000 for $72.5 million.

Several prospective buyers have reportedly looked at Yankee, including Monitor Group in Cambridge and the PR firm Weber Shandwick. But I'm told that Ted Philip, former CFO of Lycos and a member of Hasbro's board of directors, is within a few weeks of announcing a deal. Working with Philip is Tom Guilfoile, another former Lycos finance exec who handled most of the Internet company's acquisitions.

''They're two talented guys who have an opportunity to build value again," says former Lycos CEO Bob Davis, now a venture capitalist with Highland Capital Partners in Lexington.

''They're probably the two most tight-lipped people I know," says Rich Gotham, another former Lycos exec who's now executive vice president of sales for the Boston Celtics. ''You'll never get a heads-up until the deal is close to being done."

I got the heads-up a few weeks ago. Philip says via e-mail that he has ''been looking at various opportunities but at this point I am not in the position to discuss the status of any of them."

Yankee Group's revenues have been declining over the last several years, according to several sources, but Yankee marketing exec George Bates says the company has always been profitable.

If Philip does seal a deal soon to buy Yankee from Reuters, I'd expect the price tag to be significantly less than the $72.5 million Reuters paid in 2000. One question I have: Is there a chance that the new owners will retain current Yankee Group CEO Brian Adamik in that role?

Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Fast Company. He can be reached at skirsner@verizon.net.