According to a new report from IMS Research, security systems integrators in North America are somewhat leery of purchasing their network surveillance products from IT distributors.
The report, "IP Trends in Security – A Survey of Systems Integrators and Installers in Europe and North America," found that 40 percent of North American integrators prefer to deal with IT distributors when making these purchases. However, more than 50 percent of European integrators were comfortable dealing with IT distributors.
Paul Bremner, a market analyst with IMS Research, attributes this to concerns from integrators about a lack of knowledge on the part of IT distributors regarding the cameras themselves and relationships that they already have with security distributors.
"While almost 40 percent of systems integrators would like to use IT distributors, there remains a large percentage that do not," said Bremner. "The main concerns are that IT distributors have the knowledge about the networking part of the installation, but many still lack the knowledge of what lenses, housings or physical mounts to use. The other factor holding back many traditional systems integrators are the legacy security distributors where strong relationships exist and continue to persist."
In addition, almost 80 percent of North American systems installers said they required better training from their suppliers of IP-based video surveillance products. Also topping the list of additional support required was telephone/web support, demo systems/materials and better software/SDKs(software development kits).
"Systems installers have stated their requirements for better training, support, and demo systems," Bremner said. "Many of these installers will only have taken a general training course for an overview of what the technology offers, while many still have had no formal training what so ever. This knowledge needs to be provided to installers, so that the installers feel more comfortable with IP systems."
