The winds of change have swept into the access control market in 2016. The hardware is transitioning away from being solely panel-based, software is rapidly moving to the cloud, and credentials are going mobile. It seems that the security access control world is finally waking up from its technological slumber, and 2017 will be an exciting time.
These three major trends are feeding off one another and are driving the growth all around.
IP and edge based systems
In 2016, hardware companies like ISONAS, Axis, and HID took significant advantage of the timing of the market and have shaken the panel-based hardware model, gaining significant momentum toward the eventual market tipping point in 2018 of IP and edge based systems.
Migration to cloud service software
The second technological trend is the very rapid migration to cloud service software. There are two main audiences that are driving this trend, small to medium businesses and entities with facilities over a wider geography. Contrary to a premise-based solution, a hosted software product provides the ability to scale with very little or moderate costs. In the ISONAS model for example, a customer can scale a system to an unlimited number of readers and sites for less than the cost of a server.
The fear of the cloud is |
The fear of the cloud is also dissipating as many of our business and personal lives become intertwined and are hosted in the cloud. Our Microsoft Office products, Salesforce.com, the Google ecosystem, and Amazon Web Services are all providing greater services that are far more secure than nearly all business IT staffs could provide. The latest Internet security and knowledge of threats can be better acquired at such a small cost, that it may not make sense to have a server at all.
Shift to mobile credentials
Finally, the greatest change in 2017 will be with credentials. Customers have grown tired of employees, students and contractors needing to be issued a card, fob, or pin code that will be lost, forgotten or broken. Those same people are also weary of trying to figure out which card they need to get into which door or facility. The answer is the mobile credential. People do not forget their phones and, if lost, they are replaced rapidly. This becomes a major win for administrators, clients, and users. It is a very exciting time to be in access control, it’s a time for upgrades, overhauls, and the opportunities for integrators and end users are massive.
See the full coverage of 2016/2017 Review and Forecast articles here
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