It’s here, it’s now and it’s your future. The marriage of security and IT is coming off without a hitch--only question is: will it get your blessing?
You are adding value in everything you do. You are creating systems and solutions and applications end-users can grow into and with. I know you would like to be able to just plug and play integrated systems—but that’s not reality—at least not yet. In fact, according to recent SD&I studies, nearly 84 percent of our readers find the integration of many products together very challenging. We hear you on this front and we will be responding.
The networking side of the business is not going to go away; it’s going to get stronger and permeate every part of the business in good time. Many companies are getting trained on IP and IT infrastructures and the lingo that goes along with it. They are learning how to talk to the IT director and personnel so they can assure them that the bandwidth won’t be sucked away by security on the infrastructure.
Now, I don’t want to start a riff or anything, but some of the other trade magazines have been reporting that analog will still be the lion’s share of the installations in the next several years. That may be true, but do you really want to spend the next few years concentrating on analog versus digital—when you could be prepping yourself for the future?
It’s all about baby steps, but you have to start now. Sure, analog cameras will continue to dominate for the time being, but you can take advantage of the “bridge” products many manufacturers have created. Right now you have the help of the manufacturer community which is working to bridge the gap with products such as encoders, decoders, switches and the likes.
Inside this issue, we have the information to get you started—there’s the story on integrated systems and access control and video convergence, page 46. There’s our special product focus on video storage, starting on page 62, and you’ll want to see what’s going on in that segment because storage solutions are going to be one of the most critical topics in the security-IT space moving forward. Refer to the table of contents on pages 4 and 6 for our regular columnists and much more—and keep reading!
