Security integrators report that business has become more competitive in the last 3 years, driven by low end new entrants, price pressure and squeezing of independents.
Over 120 integrators responded to questions about the level of competition as well as the specific competitive drivers impacting their business.
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"We have uphill battles trying to get around Cisco video and access control specs."
All anyone has to do when competing against Cisco Video is have the prospective client talk to someone who is actually using Cisco Video. Bet 9 times our of 10 they will rethink Cisco.
There is an integrator in our region, close to Cisco's Security HQ, who works with a few A&E firms to get that worked into specifications. They are the sole distributor of the product in the region; so they are selling the product simply so that there is no possibility of competition. Any time it is an open competition, they have lost (to us, and one other company).
The comments above are very true.
The company I work for does system design and manufacturing and one method of sales is through distributors. What then happens is the end 'integrator' is calling our service department asking how to configure IP addresses, wondering why the server they bought is running so slow (because they bought an I3 based system and put 50 1080P@30FPS cameras on it..but it was cheap), asking them how to add more memory...etc.
It amazes me that such folks can 'win the bid'...yet know nearly nothing about how to configure the system.
The end 'customer' is not getting a good deal and the experienced integrators are not getting the work. This leads to a bad customer experience with IP based systems which we want to prevent as much as possible.
IN South Africa we have the Simular problems
Low cost CHinese products flooding the market
Copier companies now selling Surveillance
IT companies now selling surveillance
Price being a massive driver
From reading this, how often are medium to large sized businesses going to go with a premium service at a higher price?
