ESX 2011 education: the IP migration
Education kicked off with a bang yesterday with more sessions in business development and management; central station operations; installation management, RMR; sales and marketing; technology; and workshops on the books for the second full day of the busy show today in Charlotte. Integrators eager to gain prowess in technical and business management crowded the sessions, poised with queries in hand in an effort to do business better and secure their success in the ever-evolving security marketplace.
In the session: Migrating to IP Technology it was consistently clear that selling hardware alone, with shrinking and sometimes non-existent profit margins, just won’t cut it anymore. Speakers Tim Feury, president of Altec Systems; Stephen Washburn, Business Development Manager for Convergint Technologies LLC; and Christopher Wetzel, Chairman of the Products Committee for Security-Net and Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Intertech Security concurred that the true migration to IP technologies will only become successful if integrators position themselves with a service model; adding value to the solutions they bring to the marketplace and making for a stickier customer overall.
“The end user wants a long-term relationship with the integrator,” Feury told attendees. “And it’s all about being service based,” he said. He added that cloud computing and managed services will allow the end user to move security expenses from a capital expense to an operating expense, which too may work in the integration company’s favor as the user can plan for and deduct these expenses on a monthly basis.
Of course video was the focus of the session, including the ever-important infrastructure and recording. Washburn talked about the continued move to edge recording and streaming video for archiving through exceptions garnered via video analytics. “Edge recording will continue to grow as SD storage cards become more robust,” he said.
Wetzel reiterated the importance of edge recording and smart cameras coupled with targeted video analytics. “There is so much development happening now that will determine how we throttle video,” Wetzel said. “Cameras are becoming more and more intelligent. These are truly exciting times for the industry,” he added. – Deborah O’Mara, editor, Security Dealer & Integrator magazine
