2025 Security Industry Predictions: Jon Adams, Vice President of Sales, DMP
Adams, the vice president of sales for Digital Monitoring Products, shares his security industry predictions for 2025.
Photo courtesy of Digital Monitoring Products (DMP)
We continue our 2025 Security Industry Predictions series with Jonathan Adams, vice president of sales at Digital Monitoring Products (DMP).
Security Sales & Integration: Without getting into specific vendors or branded solutions, what technology category or solution area do you see as 2025 ripest most profitable growth opportunity for security dealers, installers and integrators?
Jonathan Adams: Access control. I think, as the private sector becomes more aware of the benefits of access control, and as different societal norms change, we feel the need to keep certain things more secure, or to keep better track of who is in our building.
It’s not just about who came in; it’s about how many people are in our building at any given time. There’s a huge opportunity with access control. When you marry that with the fact that it’s as affordable as it’s ever been, we can provide services that allow companies to protect the areas that need to be protected—protect information or assets, limit the access to it—as well as helping them better understand the traffic through their buildings.
For that reason, many of our dealers—no matter what the quote is for intrusion or anything else—are adding access control as an option. They’re often finding that their customers take it. Access control is a domino product. As soon as you add one door of access, people get used to it and think, “I need that same thing on this door and this door.”
Cloud-based products that are front and center nowadays also allow you to attach recurring monthly revenue to access control in a way that you weren’t able to do in previous decades.
SSI: These days we’re all hearing a lot about the cloud migration, AI, machine learning, crime deterrence versus crime reactive, etc. Which are these hot topics do you think is overplayed? Which ones do you think will truly transform the practice of security integration in the coming years?
Adams: I think artificial intelligence is a little bit overplayed—but, I think analytics are not overhyped. I think analytics are going to be able to allow us to scale our services in a way that previous technology did not.
For example, today a camera tracks a car’s direction, or whether it’s an animal or a person. Tomorrow, that same camera is going to do all of that, and it’s also going to look for water flowing or smoke billowing. That’s why I think analytics are extremely important. However, they’re only as important as their ability to report their findings to the customer.
So, I’m big on analytics. I’m not as keen on AI, mostly because of the way the term is loosely thrown around. I think the market’s going to tire of it before they actually see the benefits of it.
SSI: On the business and operations side, which single factor like interest rates, town related issues, geopolitical stressors pose the biggest challenge for the security industry right now? How can business owners mitigate their damage?
Adams: I think it’s probably interest rates. When we buy homes at these interest rates, we don’t have as much cash available to spend as when we bought that same house four years ago. And I think that’s the same with companies that are continuing to need to borrow—whether that’s for a project, or whether that’s to make additions to their company in some way. They’re paying more for those dollars now, which means they have less to spend.
As dealers and providers, we’re now working with people that have a little bit more of a budgetary strain than they had five years ago. And so, how do we mitigate that? I think oftentimes, offsetting the upfront cost with recurring costs helps lower the barrier to entry. Someone’s much more willing to spend less upfront and have a little bit of a higher monthly payment—it can better support their cash flow issue.
But also, I think we need to standardize on products that work for the masses. Rather than looking at each individual application as something that’s fully customized, we need to determine where that application plays within our norm—those products that we buy every day that we get better pricing on.
Maybe we can make them fit an application at a lower cost point, and that helps us earn the business and increase our recurring monthly revenue.
SSI: What’s getting better about the security industry these days and what seems to be getting worse and worse?
Adams: What’s getting better is technology that can help prevent false alarms. When you look at analytics specifically, we’ve brought to market some products that utilize video and the control panel to report analytic events to the monitoring center and reduce false alarms.
I think we’re all doing what we can to try to eliminate false alarms and lower false dispatches. The problem is not solved yet, but I think it’s getting better. We are at least cognizant, and more of the industry is trying to be part of the solution than the problem. It’s driving adoption of a lot of new technology, which is what I care about most.
We’ve also given people the ability to cancel a false alarm, with connected devices, like your apps on your mobile phones. So I think that, while it may not statistically be showing yet, our efforts towards lowering false alarms are improving.
As for what’s getting worse—as much as I love advancing technology, we are still seeing a number of companies trying to enter our industry that do not have traditional awareness of what they’re entering.
Whether those are new startups trying to take their devices and persuade the market to consider them as a security device, or a company that wants to get in, develop a software niche and then sell—they don’t quite know what they’re getting into. And I think that’s muddying up the market a little bit.
Specifically, I think one thing that’s getting worse is the number of products or solutions out there trying to market themselves as a security product, when in reality, it’s a lifestyle product or a convenience product. This detracts from what our security professionals do, and creates a false sense of security, leaving society members vulnerable to some sort of calamity.
SSI: What’s the single most pressing issue that professionals in the security industry should look to tackle right now?
Adams: I think it’s important in this particular juncture that society is in, that when we have events of any sort that have large numbers of people attending—we should feel safe. When we once thought about mass shootings, we thought of gatherings of thousands…and then we witnessed it in gatherings of hundreds…and then we started to see it take place in smaller gatherings, such as local parades or soccer fields.
I think one of the things we need to be a part of solving and be aware of, is the need for access control (where applicable), and surveillance solutions that are going to help us—not just to identify when these things happen, but anything that helps to increase responsiveness.
We are responsible for providing the solutions that help make us and our families and community members feel safer when we’re outside of our homes. I think that is something we need to dive into and play a role in—who do we need to meet within our communities to make sure they’re aware of technologies we offer?
They can help us all not just feel safer, but actually be safer when we’re communing together, outside of our homes.
SSI: Finish this sentence: 2025 will be remembered as the year that the security industry …
Adams: … said goodbye to motion detectors. This is the year where the technology costs and our price met. We are able to bring in the new technology and get rid of the old technology that causes so many false alarms.
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