Axis Communications’ Nilsson Says IT Knowledge, Education Market to Pace 2015

Axis Communications’ Fredrik Nilsson shares the issues he thinks most affect the overall security industry and more.

The January edition of SSI includes our annual industry forecast as a cornerstone of our special 2015 Industry Forecast Issue. For the piece, I interviewed more than 20 of the industry’s most knowledgeable market analysts, business experts, security dealers, systems integrators, supplier representatives and trade association directors. Some of their perspectives can be found in the magazine article, with the balance of their assessments appearing in separate blog posts.

Featured in this installment: Fredrik Nilsson, general manager, Axis Communications

What are some of the major video surveillance market developments you see for 2015?

Fredrik Nilsson: School security will continue to be important to the overall community, as will city surveillance and critical infrastructure security. Public safety will have a growing surveillance market in event security. More cities are becoming entertainment centers, often with hundreds of thousands of visitors at a single event. Part of this market will be served by the temporary surveillance and entry screening solution market. Retailers will still see the easier to calculate ROI, even if they continue to be under pressure from online sales.

How do you see business models evolving for suppliers, dealers/integrators and monitoring providers during 2015?

Nilsson: The industry has seen an inflow of new vendors and physical security will continue to attract new companies, as well as entrants from Asia. As competition increases, vendors will have to continue to invest to stay relevant. For dealers and integrators, we’ll see the continued need to understand requirements from an IT perspective and ability to work strategically with end users to build long-term relationships and sell value, not products. Insofar as monitoring providers are concerned, now that high-quality video is more available for small systems at a reasonable cost, the expectation for video verification from end users will continue to emerge. Ideally, alarm systems should be integrated with video verification. In the residential market, new entrants such as telcos and Google will continue to make inroads also on the security systems side.

What are some significant overall industry developments you expect to materialize in 2015?

Nilsson: With the strategic importance of security, it is likely that we see continued big player entrance and consolidations. There are initiatives in some vertical market segments, like education, for policies around security. The need for school safety and security standards and best practices is being met by states with the largest systems, like California, Florida, New York, Chicago and Connecticut. Critical infrastructure working groups are now focusing efforts in petrochemical, power and food and water defense.

What type of year in 2015 are you anticipating throughout the channel?

Nilsson: On the suppliers side, there will be reasonable growth with more providers of complete solutions to the mid and small size markets. We will also see continued consolidation of the market as some vendors merge and some divest from the market as competitive pressures increases. For dealers and integrators, there will be continued good growth for value-based integrators. More of them will be moving toward the IT way of doing business, where margin is made on value provided, such as ongoing system maintenance and support, instead of margin on selling products. There are great opportunities in the area of video monitoring, with bandwidth and technology being appropriate form solutions, and also mobility bringing additional value to the systems.

What are some pressing security industry issues you expect to remain unresolved?

Nilsson: There are areas where technology is actually ahead of the industry. One example is integrated systems. While most security managers would agree that security systems should be fully integrated, most systems today ― even new ones being installed ― are still standalone systems. End users are rapidly replacing “closed” appliance-based solutions with platforms linking security devices for scalability, agility and elasticity. Another area is video verification. Most alarms today are not verified by video, which means that guards/police are dispatched on many false alarms. Video verification could help reduce false alarms, and also better prepare safety staff as they respond to a real alarm. Hosted video is a scalable way to provide video verification.

What is something that might surprise security professionals?

Nilsson: With more data breaches, some very tough requirements might come down on the cybersecurity side that vendors and integrators need to understand and live up to.

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About the Author

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Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].

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