A Road Well Traveled

Willliam E. “Bill” Jackson has joined Digital Monitoring Products, DMP, as the corporation’s president and chief operating officer. With just about a month at the helm, Jackson is responsible for the day-to-day management of the company. Prior to joining DMP, he served as President and C.O.O. of PerMar Security Services, a large Midwest central station alarm company. He brings a strong understanding of the central station market to the position. It’s time to burn some rubber and catch up with Jackson. Brady: Congratulations on your new position. DMP’s focus has been designing and manufacturing products that support central station companies and their unique needs. What are some of the unique needs of central stations?”Jackson: The central station is, at its core, pivotal to the recurring revenue model. Containing and improving operating costs is imperative. The right product selection can assist in that area. Further, the central station is at the forefront of the nuisance and false alarm dispatch challenge facing the industry. The problem does not get easier with continued rapid consolidation, the subsequent assimilation of multiple monitoring technologies, and the customer service challenges this dynamic creates. Excellent operator training becomes essential, as does the selection of open platform products that are both reliable and intuitive.Brady:How will your management experience and central station background contribute to DMP?”Jackson: DMP’s philosophy and product design goals have always been oriented toward reducing cost and improving efficiencies in the central station. The company has achieved those ends by listening closely to customer needs. My experience provides me with an appreciation for the wisdom of that strategy.

Brady: What do you see developing in the alarm communication over data networks market? How can dealers capitalize on these developments?
Jackson: DMP sees the logical progression is to make it easier to access networks. It makes sense to facilitate GPRS communication to the central station. Therefore, we plan to introduce a cellular router. This is interesting because it allows dealers to negotiate their own service with their cellular provider.

DMP introduced alarm signal transport over data networks in 1994. It is interesting that the technology is just now becoming broadly accepted. “AoIP” (Alarm over Internet Protocol – as our product development team likes to call it), has become commonplace in the financial institution market, as well as for the Federal Government with UL 2050 DOD SCIF environment.

We are seeing an increasing appetite in the retail vertical marketplace as well. There is also an opportunity in homes with the proliferation of VoIP service, and it is interesting to note that more than 7,000,000 businesses deploy broadband. There is a huge opportunity when you consider the large installed base of “legacy” supervised signaling technologies for fire and intrusion monitoring that require replacing, and/or upgrading, as they age and industry technology becomes obsolete.

With the advent of network-ready control panels, the remote and central administration of electronic access control with intrusion and fire monitoring becomes a viable and emerging market. Large amounts of data can be managed securely, quickly and economically. Monitoring all kinds of data and events via private or public networks becomes possible and virtually limitless. These are interesting new times for our industry.

Brady: What about verified response?
Jackson: It appears to be here to stay. More municipalities are enacting ordinances requiring some form of pre-dispatch verification. However, it is difficult to rationalize the cost of equipment for verification that may increase the cost of the base system by more than a third, perhaps even higher in some instances. There is no one thing that will drastically reduce nuisance alarms and false dispatch by itself. Rather, it is likely a combination of simple and intuitive products, training for alarm company staff and users, and in some instances, pre-dispatch verified response.