A Solution for Security’s Margin Problem
SecurOS® Tracking Kit provides up to 10 different AI-powered video analytics to address numerous security needs.
The last several years have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the security industry as a whole and for integrators, in particular. The Covid-19 pandemic has, in many ways, reshaped the industry landscape and forced many organizations to reevaluate their approach to the market.
In addition to developing creative ways to mitigate against the effects of supply chain woes and staffing shortages that became prevalent throughout the pandemic, integrators have also been significantly impacted by inflation in recent years as manufacturers adjust to the realities of a post-Covid business environment. According to Security Business magazine’s “State of the Security Industry 2022” report, 60% of integrators surveyed reported that rising interest rates and inflation had impacted their business. The most prominent impacts noted among integrators polled included delayed or canceled capital expenditures for expansion, etc. (28%), commercial customers not buying as much by volume (26%), and a decrease of new hires (20%).
These inflationary pressures have also exacerbated one of the industry’s long-standing challenges – a steady, continuing decline in hardware margins. Though many companies are now increasingly exploring opportunities to generate higher amounts of recurring monthly revenue via things like hosted and/or managed services or live video monitoring, the margins received on the sell of things like surveillance cameras and appliances have long served as the lifeblood of security integration.
However, pricing competition between manufacturers has created a so-called “race to the bottom” throughout the industry where many jobs are now won on price alone rather than by offering superior capabilities or feature sets. If the security channel continues to go down the path of bargain hunting among vendors to close deals, then margins will only continue to shrink and likely fuel even more industry consolidation.
With some manufacturers already completely bypassing integrators with direct to end user sales and others acquiring their own integration arms, business paradigms are quickly changing throughout the industry and those who fail to adapt will be left behind. So, the question becomes: how can integrators address this falling margin dilemma without substantially changing their existing business model? The answer lies in the current generation of AI-powered video analytics, which can leverage an end user’s existing surveillance infrastructure to provide a variety of alerts and datapoints that organizations could only dream about 20 years ago.
Overcoming Analytics’ Original Sin
Unfortunately, the first generation of analytics that took the market by storm nearly two decades largely overpromised and underdelivered on the capabilities the technology could accurately and reliably provide. This left a sour taste in the mouths of many an end user, some of whom invested thousands of dollars in technology that was not ready for primetime.
It should come as little surprise then that many are still skeptical about the claims made by vendors regarding the current generation of video analytics and even AI as a product category more broadly. However, it is the introduction of AI into the market that has served as an inflection point for analytics as advancements in algorithm training models have made the creation of high-trust analytics a reality. Now, rather than worrying about having to chase ghosts when an alarm comes into a security operations center, personnel can treat it as if they were receiving the same information from a fellow human.
At ISS, for example, many of our AI analytic modules are created using advanced artificial neural network technology in conjunction with Intel’s OpenVINO™ technology. The OpenVINO toolkit makes the most of Intel AI hardware, the latest neural network accelerator chips, as well as embedded computers and edge devices to maximize analytics performance.
One Camera, Multiple Analytic Detectors
The SecurOS® Tracking Kit module from ISS, which is powered by this same Intel technology, enables end users to take advantage up to 10 different analytic detectors per camera, including: intrusion, object left behind, object removed, loitering, running, smoke, crowds, dwell time, wrong direction, and object counting (people, vehicles, etc.). These detectors subsequently enable end users to search for events based on object type, color, region of interest, time interval, as well as a number of other filters.
Additionally, the hardware-agnostic Tracking Kit can be seamlessly combined with our SecurOS® Unifier solution to help automate the decision management process in the event of a security incident. ISS also provides databasing and dashboarding of analytic data to help customers understand various trends occurring throughout their organizations as well as to analyze security events.
Whether you want to boost business intelligence or create a more secure facility, the Tracking Kit provides the analytic modules you need to achieve your goals. For more information about ISS and our SecurOS® Tracking Kit module, contact us via email. You can also request a demo.