What a year it’s been! 2017 has been a monumental period of product innovation and growth for Pivot3. The company experienced a more-than-50-percent increase in bookings from Q2 to Q3 this year, including a record number of million-dollar orders.
We also saw deals supporting multiple use cases more than double, and experienced continued growth in the video surveillance market, driven by new product enhancements and contracts worth more than $1 million. We have also invested in building an influential group of surveillance-focused experts internally, and increased our focus on building strong partnerships with major VMS players, key systems integrators and other aligned-technology providers, such as Iron Mountain and Lenovo.
A more robust industry
It wasn’t only Pivot3 that had a healthy year; the industry, as a whole, is robust. Investment in technology is growing in markets ranging from public sector organisations, municipalities, gaming and transit agencies — all seeking technology solutions that drive value, increase intelligence and reduce risk. It is the drive for data that propels the video surveillance industry forward.
A respected industry thought leader said recently that “data is the modern currency,” and video is the most prominent Big Data application in the world (by far). Those vendors and installers that understand how to help organisations capture, analyse and leverage data will be the ones who secure their future in the marketplace.
| A respected industry thought leader said recently that “data is the modern currency" |
Honest predictions
Last year, I predicted that cybersecurity would become of greater importance to our market and that prediction was on point. Data security has become the number one concern in the industry, widely because users are moving back to more-trusted brands that focus on implementing cybersecurity protocols into network devices.
In the coming year, cybersecurity will continue to be a primary focus — and it must be — for all product vendors, integrators and end-users. The adoption of standards and guidelines around data security for physical security technology will be imperative to ensuring data integrity.
An era of evolution
Over the past year, deep learning and artificial intelligence have become some of the most quoted buzzwords. Organisations see the value in leveraging these trends to analyse data more efficiently, and because of recent market innovations, we see a real impact an analytics effectiveness.
Additionally, we have seen more and more large organisations migrate more of their security function to the cloud. Today, private-cloud architecture is no longer novelty; it is expected, and despite some well-publicised breaches, the public cloud is now considered more secure than some traditional on-site solutions.
| Cloud-based systems will be deployed much more frequently across some market segments, from SMEs to larger enterprises |
The year to come
As 2018 approaches, I expect to see many of these same trends accelerate even further. Cloud-based systems will be deployed much more frequently across some market segments, from SMEs to larger enterprises.
AI will become more mainstream, and analytics solutions will become more advanced. Overall, we at Pivot3 look forward to another strong growth period and seeing the continued evolution of the market as we swing into another year.