While we all have our opinions about what the year will hold, backed up by experts we expect to have a better foresight than our barbers do, the people on the coalface of the security industry often have a better idea of what is coming down the line. With this in mind, Hi-Tech Security Solutions asked a few of the players involved in the South Africa security market for their views on what to expect in 2012.
We wanted to know what the main trends in the market will be, how the economy will hold out and what advice they had for their partners. Given the state of the global economy, our first question had to be about the economy.
Hi-Tech Security Solutions: Are you expecting the recession to ease in 2012 or will the economy still be tough for the security industry?
Gary Chalmers, CEO of iPulse: iPulse has had a fantastic 2011 with growth in biometric sales into almost triple digits. Based on our pipelines and the business opportunities secured this year, we expect to see further massive growth in 2012. We have found that while the smaller dealers have struggled in 2011 and will most probably continue to do so in 2012, the larger dealers and bigger contracts, especially in government in South Africa and in the mining and security sectors in Africa show nothing but an increase in investment, with more to come.
Andre Grove, technical director, Condyn: The market will continue to be tough as companies still perceive security as an expense that adds no value. Normally this changes only after something goes wrong. The major reason the security industry was so slow was that security tenders from government were not allocated and limited business was done by government – mostly renewals, but this will hopefully change next year. We should see some growth in South Africa as we have seen security grow in the past year in Africa.
Hi-Tech Security Solutions: What do you think are the most important trends we will see in your area of the market in 2012?
Gary Chalmers: I suspect that 2012 will be the year of consolidation where all the mergers, acquisitions and sales of the various businesses settle down into a new order in the playing field. Big multinational companies are now the order of the day for large installations across multidisciplined environments and I expect some major changes in the pecking order of this segment of the market. This kind of change always creates a major threat for the entrenched manufacturers and we have seen a significant shift away from the hard and fast relationships of the past to an active interrogation of what the alternatives are. It is going to be an interesting year.
Andre Grove: The firewall market has reached saturation, but corporations are looking at outsourcing firewall management as resources are limited and expensive. The IPS market has not had much happening, but DDoS attacks are becoming a bigger problem and large corporates will have to address this problem by upgrading or installing IPS solutions that cater for this problem.
Companies will also look more at management reporting tools to be able to get reports on the security status of the solutions that are deployed and if they are working as promised.
Ernest Mallett, sales director, Sub-Saharan Africa, Tyco Security Products: The growing popularity of mobile applications that will control a range of security technologies will be a major force in 2012. In the intrusion market, consumer demand for access to home intrusion and security systems on smartphones will continue to drive new functionalities in that sector, beyond simply arming and disarming the system. Mobile access on these devices are key to the evolution of the home security system and are changing how consumers access these products, from the keypad in the home to exclusively via mobile.
End-users in the commercial and industrial sectors are also hungry for mobile access to their video systems, from remote PTZ control, monitoring multiple cameras at once and the ability to search recorded video remotely.
Wireless systems, both on the intrusion side and the deployment of wireless video installations are also continuing to gain steam as the reliability of the technology continues to grow and the cost savings and convenience demonstrates greater and greater benefits to end users at all levels.
Hi-Tech Security Solutions: What areas/technologies will be in focus this year?
Gary Chalmers: 2012 is going to be a key year for two technologies in my opinion: card and fingerprint combinations, and automated time and attendance systems. We have seen significant growth in the interest in these two products (not necessarily combined), but I think that technologies like HID’s iClass, combined with fingerprint readers is a major emerging technology. While time and attendance has risen to a point where almost every major company is evaluating not just the system, but the outdated modes of data collection such as clocks, cards and registers.
I also think that the active focus of companies like Tyco in the South African market are going to bring high quality, affordable, fully integrated security solutions into the market, in a way no other company has done before, and that this will also have a major effect on customer focus.
Andre Grove: The area we see more interest in is in FIM (file integrity monitoring) where we have had a lot of interest from private and public companies. This solution prevents administrators from changing anything on a server or network peripheral without change control approval.
Ernest Mallett: With the launch of our Victor video management system last year, Tyco Security Products will continue to market this as an attractive migration platform to American Dynamics customers who are long-time Intellex DVR users. Victor enables the viewing and control of video from the DVR and NVR environments in a single interface, which provides a way for users to leverage existing analogue infrastructures while being able to add nearly any brand of HD camera.
Our access control offerings for Tyco Security Products in South Africa will continue to focus on integration with other key security systems and vendors, particularly on the video side. We are looking at continued growth with enterprise customers and the government and in the aviation sector, with our CEM Systems security management software.
And of course, we will be concentrating on the integration of the Visonic product family into Tyco products, adding to the wireless intrusion lineup, Visonic’s PowerG long-range wireless technology. (Tyco acquired Visonic in late 2011.)
Hi-Tech Security Solutions: What advice would you give integrators and installers to help them succeed in 2012 and beyond?
Gary Chalmers: If you are a small integrator and installer, times will continue to be tough unless you align yourself with the bigger players. A common trend for these larger players now is to find and work with a group of small partners on specific contracts in specific regions, as the big players simply do not have enough staff to deal with the large scale contracts they are winning.
Andre Grove: They need to get closer to the customers and sell solutions that work, not just any solution. When they do not, customers see security as an expense as they see nothing that can show the value of the expenditure made on security solutions.
Hi-Tech Security Solutions: Will companies eventually understand the convergence between IT and security and start asking for security products that are integrated with existing IT systems?
Ernest Mallett: Companies that have their own internal IT departments are more apt to request these types of integrated solutions and are much more aware of the IT advantages as well as the implications of IP security equipment on their internal networks. Enterprises that have adopted a converged access control model of physical and logical security are clearly the early adopters, along with sectors such as financial services and other sectors who recognised early on the strengths of a coordinated solution and combined budgets and buying power.
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