As you’ve probably heard by now, this year’s PSA TEC event was held in Denver during a historic blizzard. The storm led to the cancellation over of 1,000 flights, seriously impacting the travel plans of many attendees.
Scheduled to take place during the event was SSI‘s annual integrator roundtable. Three of the four participants were able to attend, while RFI President and COO Brad Wilson was stuck in San Jose, Calif.
With 200 employees across four market office locations in San Jose, Calif., Seattle, Sacramento Calif. and Reno, Nevada, RFI is a systems integrator celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
SSI reached out post-show to get Wilson’s insight on trends, opportunities and challenges in the security industry.
What do you think of hosted and managed services? Is this something your company utilizes?
BRAD WILSON: Hosted systems are certainly a target revenue stream for RFI today, and I believe will be an industry standard in the near future.
Managed Services are again a target for RFI today, but will be crucial for our success in the future. I believe that remote support for systems will be the primary source of service, with on-site being the secondary.
How are you tackling cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is a new piece to every system and every vertical that we support that we will have to grow with. This is now a reality that we have to face on how we protect our customers, as well as ourselves. Once these practices are identified, we can move on to develop methods to monetize while still adding value. Strategic partnerships is a must.
However, this is a concern that will always change and we will always have to be modifying how we do business to adapt to the changes.
What about 4K, multisensor arrays and video analytics?
Camera hardware continues to improve every day, often at paces that cannot be kept up with for end users. As solution providers, we must be aware of the product improvements that are available on the market for our customers. In addition, we also must be aware of the limitations of these products.
Multisensory arrays and 4K cameras are becoming more and more of a standard. However, while increasing resolution on these sensors add benefit and features to a system, they also create greater load on bandwidth, power budget and storage. These are not necessarily bad things, but need to be kept in mind when designing the system.
Video Analytics are becoming more of a standard for video systems, rather than an add-on. These are increasing the value and efficiency of systems, and will only continue to improve as chipsets improve. We will also see additional resources at the edge providing the path to AI, deep learning and other enhancements.
What is your take on wireless solutions?
Wireless access control has opened a large door for securing doors that end users previously did not want to invest in securing. However, more often than not, we prefer sticking with radio-based locks in place of WiFi locks to reduce the network surface area of a system. From a security standpoint, manufacturers will only provide updates for these devices for only a few years, much less than the actual expectancy of the life cycle of the lock itself.
You’re advising consultant to a security integrator, what are the top 3 pieces of advice?
1. Be very focused on the service delivery element of your business
2. The enterprise customer has changed, more IT-centric staff with multiple stakeholders and the difference between operational risks versus organizational risk
3. Develop cyber skill set that you can package with solutions
