Genetec’s brand new Experience Center in Washington, D.C. saw flocks of security industry journalists arrive this February for the company’s first press summit since Covid-19.
Several Genetec executives took to the stage to discuss the physical security industry’s migration to the cloud and the company’s roadmap going forward, including the announcement of Genetec’s new security offering, Genetec Security Center SaaS.
Seismic Shifts
The evolution of the physical security industry was the topic of the hour, with Andrew Elvish, Genetec’s Vice President of Marketing, succinctly summing up the shift with the title of his opening presentation: “seismic.”
This seismic shift, Elvish elaborates, is the emergence of hybrid cloud infrastructures. Pulling from Genetec’s 2024 State of Physical Security report, a survey of 5,500 physical security industry professionals including end users and channel partners, he indicates a recent and rapid adoption of physical-cloud hybridization. Many organizations are now combining on-campus offerings like video surveillance with cloud-based solutions.
In Genetec's 2022 survey, respondents reported that 58% of their physical security system was on-premises and 42% was cloud or hybrid cloud, says Elvish. In the 2023 survey, those numbers jumped to 33% of respondents stating that their physical security systems were on-premises and 67% were cloud or hybrid cloud.
What is happening with channel partners, he says, is that 39% are now leading with cloud-based, 52% offer it, and 74% anticipate offering it.
“This is a bigger than coaxial to IP. But it’s not just the change from analog to IP, and it’s not just a change in how we think about our business or how our partners and end users consume the technology, but rather the very nature of what we should expect from the physical security practice,” concludes Elvish. “Changes are happening now, change that will certainly transform our tomorrow and change that I believe is truly seismic.”
Bonds of Partnership
Genetec’s success in this evolving, “seismic” industry can be attributed to its robust network of channel partners, explains Michel Chalouhi, Genetec’s Vice President of Global Sales.
“We are just one part of the equation. Everything that we do, everything that we built, evolved around our channel partners here,” says Chalouhi. “No matter how you break it, we can’t know everything about every vertical. We look at partners who have that knowledge and experience in the verticals we operate in. That’s key for us.”
“When we talk about signature brands, there’s a crafted story; it’s now talking about helping our customers in those verticals achieve business outcomes,” Chalouhi continues. “That’s part of how we grew, and our channel partners also went on that journey.”
Genetec’s strategy in forging partnerships is very selective, he explains. The biggest key is consistency: with a smaller network of 2,000 partners broken down by region and chosen with an emphasis on expertise, scale, and knowledge, dealing with Genetec is going to remain consistent across the globe.
Make Life Easier
The “make life easier” approach is one Genetec takes further with Christian Morin, Genetec’s Chief Security Officer. His panel, aptly titled “Ease,” speaks to one of the cloud's most attractive options: its ease of use.
“People want ease,” Morin begins. “They want this because the cloud provides ease and it addresses many, many problems that organizations face. But there’s a difference between ease and simplicity.”
Ease, he explains, is about removing friction, allowing professionals to achieve business outcomes with as little effort as possible. A policy of simplicity, however, may cause companies to compromise on capability and functionality. Considering this, Genetec aims for an ease-of-use philosophy: “Customers and organizations want things easier, but they don’t want to compromise on capabilities.”
Morin discusses the consumption gap or the idea that organizations often have difficulty installing and deploying software with new features or capabilities to manage. Companies with older software may refrain from updating their technology not for lack of want but because it can be too expensive or complicated to do so.
“They want to have access to that innovation again,” says Morin. “To get through the consumption gap, they need resiliency. They need to connect from anywhere, anytime. They want a better security posture but lack skilled labor to manage their servers and perform some of the update operations. Implementing your own cybersecurity practices as an organization is a difficult thing. There are a lot of aspects to cybersecurity, but not many organizations can afford that.”
Segueing into Genetec’s big announcement, Morin says this: “By looking at what our end customers, integrators, and partners want, we cooked up something internally.”
On the horizon: Genetec Security Center SaaS
First announced at Genetec’s press summit and newly unveiled to the public on February 21, Genetec Security Center SaaS combines access control, video management, forensic searching, intrusion monitoring, and automation, among other security capabilities. All Genetec’s current cloud offerings will be brought together into this single unified SaaS solution.
“This isn’t about compromising on the capabilities we currently offer our customers,” Morin explains. “This is about continuing to provide the value of the things we currently do to the customers we service, but making the process easier, faster, and nonstop.”
Genetec Security Center SaaS was designed to make the physical security industry’s transition to cloud and hybrid architectures more pain-free with special attention to Genetec’s partners and integrators.
“First and foremost, Security Center SaaS is about being easy,” Morin says. “We’re looking at the overall experience in terms of dealing with Genetec specifically as it pertains to our systems integrators and channel partners. It’s not just about making the product easy: it’s about making the product easy to find, easy to understand, easy to procure, and then easy to deploy, and from that point on, easy to maintain.”
The solution is designed for partners to have constant access to innovation, he says. Genetec’s goal is for partners to have fully operational systems within minutes with a fully automated quoting and ordering process that makes managing orders and deployments easier. The solution’s open hybrid-SaaS architecture enables organizations to choose the devices that they require and integrate those they already have, even if they aren’t cloud-ready, using Genetec edge appliances.
“The physical security industry has not been able to get cloud or software as a service quite right, especially for enterprise customers,” finishes Morin. “The enterprise capabilities and open architecture of Security Center SaaS are designed to enable systems to handle complex workloads where they make the most sense to be deployed. The flexibility addresses a longstanding need of end users and fills an important gap in the market.”
Security Center SaaS will be showcased for the first time at ISC West Booth #13062 and will be available globally in April 2024. For more information, read Genetec’s official release here.
Samantha Schober is Associate Editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com.
