1. Campuses want viable vendors: The current economic recession is making schools, universities and hospitals double check the financial stability of potential vendors. No one wants to purchase an expensive system, only to have the manufacturer go out of business and not be able to maintain the products, provide spare parts and de-bug the system.

“Clients are questioning the viability of companies that aren’t making money,” says Robert Grossman, president of R. Grossman and Associates, an electronic security and integration consulting firm. “There were a lot of companies started by venture capitalists with the intention that they would grow to critical mass and be able to survive on their own or be sold off. Now clients are seeing that some of these companies are going away because the funding has gone away.”

2. IT personnel are much more involved: Just about every new technology operates, in one fashion or another, on the IT network. Now, campus IT personnel are much more comfortable with video and access systems on their network… as long as network security and bandwidth aren’t compromised.

Some are so comfortable, in fact, that they are writing new security system specifications, creating the RFP and either installing the system or hiring a contractor to do it. According to Grossman, however, IT personnel often don’t understand the application or quirks of the security industry, nor the policies and codes that support the technology.

“A larger portion of our business is now dedicated to going in and cleaning up these messes,” he says. “If you have someone who’s done this before, they know what you have to look out for, where you can save money and where you shouldn’t save money.”

Grossman recommends campuses hire someone with experience – possibly a security director – to make sure everything is done correctly.

3. Open standards are becoming the norm: In the past, many security solutions were proprietary, which meant a campus had to purchase all of its video or access control equipment from one manufacturer. Increasingly, however, solutions manufacturers are adopting open standards, which allow equipment from different vendors to work together.

“Customer service tends to suffer when a manufacturer has you locked in,” says Grossman. “My clients feel that when they are not locked into proprietary solutions, they tend to get better service because the vendor knows they have alternatives.

“Clients are asking for OEM manufacturers rather than a specific access control manufacturer so that if there are problems with the access control company, they can use the same panels, edge devices and computers, and just change out the software and then go with another company,” he adds.

With video, Grossman insists that cameras work with a minimum of five video management software platforms and that the video management platform work with a minimum of 10 camera ­vendors.

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