Comparing 2020 Reality To 2010 Expectations

Predicting Disasters Like Coronavirus

I would have never guessed a pandemic would impact our industry the way it has. The security industry is resilient, one of the reasons I have invested my life into it and have no intention of leaving. Our companies can grow even during an economic downturn if you know what you're doing.

IT Taking Over Not Really

This was my fear in 2010; I knew a lot of IT guys that wanted to get into installing cameras. Most of the companies I knew making a move from IT to installing camera systems were installing what I would consider non-industry standard camera systems. I think this is why they failed. They couldn't deliver on the promises they made to their customers. I saw a lot of Ubiquiti products installed; they're OK. Not great. IT companies probably didn't realize the level of customer service that would be required for camera systems. They're used to dealing with issues via an email ticketing system and not helping the customer through physical security threats to their business.

2020 to 2030

First of all, we need to see the world return to normal after COVID, it's going to be hard to predict the next 10 years and how this will impact our industry. We may see one of two things happen. People will be sick of working at home and ready to get back to work and those office buildings will fill up again. Or we could see a lot of those buildings sit vacant for many years and see a need for security decrease as those buildings are empty with no one to pay the lease. We may also see a dramatic increase in home security as people are at home more (we've already seen this). Let's revisit the next 10 years next Spring when we see what happens with the COVID regulations in place now.

I was just talking about the analog to IP conversion with someone this morning. I think the bottom line is that technology takes longer than we like (or hope) to get established in the security industry - but it eventually happens.

"IT Taking Over Not Really"

In our experience, internal I.T. personnel and network cabling & electrical contractors getting into the camera business has been disastrous.

For I.T., the motivation seems to be control, but they don't even have the resources to provide fundamental desktop support to your basic Karen in accounting. How could they possibly manage thousands of cameras effectively? So far, we have successfully resisted them.

As for cabling & electrical contractors, it's a money grab and they have no idea what to do when it comes to service. We are always careful to choose certified contractors when we can but sometimes other decision makers want to save money... inevitably it backfires.

You don't mention video analytics, I'm guessing because you are delineating the market segments, but 10 years ago there was an overcrowded video analytics market with a lot of software that didn't work. Now, there is an overcrowded video analytic market with a lot of software that works pretty well. I think that it will influence the camera market over the next 10 years, as camera manufacturers with integrated analytics will become more appealing, whether homegrown or built by a partner. At some point (if not already), selling a camera that doesn't have analytics will be mostly a price decision.

Also, Sony went from a major security camera player (including being a founding member of ONVIF) to a chip vendor over the last 10 years.

I'm a manufacturing rep now in the VMS space. Dealing with IT was a curse and blessing when I was an integrator. The CSO is the key. I was always willing to pass the SQL DB running in a cluster to a corporate DBA to backup and have IT run roughshod on the virtual applications. The downside to this was the endless, mind numbing GoTo's for resource allocations, call trees, scheduled meetings, etc. But in the end, there was never a failure or compromised security of the same. This is Access Control in it's optimum environment across an enterprise.

Now it's VMS and it is exactly the same. It's not that IT doesn't want to do it, but if there is a WAN/LAN facing port, they feel obligated to get into the fray. Most of the time, when explained, it a no brainier. However, there are IT gods who feel that they own every RJ-45 going into a switch, regardless of the ownership.

In essence, IT can be your friend or your nemesis. Play nice, lay out the responsibilities and it typically works out.

It's all a conversation in front of the right people.

I guess you could consider IndigoVision went Open, Avigilon stayed mostly closed and both are owned by a radio manufacturer?

Two Words:

Todd Rockoff