Commercial Integrator + Security Sales March 2024 - 60

SSI
VIDEO SURVEILLANCE
ensuring the integrity of the systems that
we deliver, " says Yunag.
" We always think about mission-critical
deployments as having the need to have a
consistent maintenance and service and
cyber and all the other routines that go
along with delivering those solutions, " he
says. " Installing and configuring those
things in the front end is a fraction of
what needs to happen. "
Yunag adds, " If that solution is truly
gonna deliver its mission inside of an
organization to either limit risk or drive
a compliance outcome or protect people
and property, all those kind of things, and
all of that subsequent management and
monitoring and maintenance, those are
conversations that we have upfront with
all of our customers, because if they're
trying to achieve those type of things,
someone needs to be performing those
functions, and most of the time that
comes back to us, or we'd like to think so. "
The Growth of Video Surveillance
Although there are plenty of places where
video surveillance seems to be a natural
fit - from warehouses to corporate headquarters
to retail locations - our experts
say there have been a few installations in
places they didn't necessarily expect. And
there could be yet more market applications
in the future.
" The one that I didn't think we would
have had a great success is the high-end
residential, " says Loud. " People love to have
choice, but with choice comes different
price points. It may be that a resi solution
doesn't have 10 cameras. It may have two or
three, but I think there's been greater penetration
there than I probably originally had
thought, which is certainly encouraging. "
" There are so many verticals from even
bicycle shops, schools galore, even mostly
in the private sector, where you've got these
churches that have daycare facilities that
want to watch and see what's going on, "
he continues. " Most folks have dumpster
issues. They get fed up and frustrated
enough that they all of a sudden say, 'How
do we stop filling the dumpsters?' "
Even as technology continues to play
more of a role in the security market,
nothing beats word of mouth when it
comes to getting new work, says Loud.
" All these industries talk to each other,
so once you get started within one, you
know the referral factor [is huge], " he
says. " When you talk about car dealerships,
you talk about the cannabis
vertical, low-income housing, when you
start talking about those type of verticals,
that's pretty much been some of the heavy
hitter verticals for video surveillance over
the past decade. "
Acadian customers ask regularly about
equipping their surveillance cameras
systems with smart search and video and
operational analytics, says Niles.
" It seems like customers are getting
more sophisticated with that and requesting
that just to make their lives easier
after the fact, " he says. " I didn't think that
we would get that many requests from
clients on that. "
Niles adds, " I thought that was something
we would have to bring to them,
but that is an area where they are coming
to us a little more frequently in the past.
That's a little surprising, but definitely
encouraging and a great thing to see. "
Yunag didn't offer specifics but says
Convergint sees " ...the desire to talk about
using cameras for things that are well
beyond what we would traditionally talk
about in terms of video surveillance, "
including operational efficiency, space
utilization, occupancy, real estate management,
process improvement, client
satisfaction, marketing and analytics.
Rank the following challenges
as the leading reasons for your
company either not offering or
struggling with cloud-based video
surveillance as a service (VSaaS).
1. Demand and marketplace
acceptance
2. Developing pricing or a
business model
3. Staffing
4. Costs
5. Marketing
6. Training
7. Determining sales incentives
8. Codes, regulations or standards
The biggest inhibitor weighing
down integrators' VSaaS business
lies in underwhelming demand and
marketplace acceptance.
Those are areas where AI and computer
vision really become important, he says.
" Organizations are really interested and
coming to security because we have all
the cameras or the security department
inside of a customer organization has
all these cameras and they're beginning
to say, 'Well, what if we have all these
cameras? How else can we leverage the
visual intelligence that these sensors are
producing?,' " he says.
" Chief information officers are thinking
about 'this is just the cameras, a sensor.
It's producing visual data now,' " says Yunag.
" We're entering a world where almost
anything we can see, we can turn into
data. So what do we want to see and what
data do we want to understand about our
environments?' " SSI
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60 Commercial Integrator+Security Sales & Integration | March 2024
Commercial Integrator + Security Sales March 2024

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