2015 was a year of consolidations: The spring of 2015 recorded the highest acquisition rate for a six-month period in 10 years. There were single-digit market growth rates reported in video surveillance due to price erosion affecting revenues. Video solution providers are expanding into access control, and both are slowly but steadily moving into the cloud. Users want the efficiency benefits of converging access control with video verification and unified operation. There are more cloud offerings. Commoditisation is occurring from strong price competition at the lower end of the market with Asian camera manufacturers leading the way, taking market shares from premium brands.
Consumer growth in security industry of video surveillance, access control and wearables
The main technologies currently seeing the highest compounded annual growth are consumer video surveillance, access control as a service, and wearables. Thermal imaging, edge recording and video surveillance as a service are among the technologies with the lowest growth compared to expectations. User interfaces on all platforms/devices are becoming the norm; devices are becoming more mobile (including drones!) and wearables are increasingly being adopted. Growing consumer use is requiring legislation. Remote diagnostics are coming into play in security; video analytics are more common.
Digitalisation & virtualisation
Digitalisation for consumers (social media, tech offerings from financial companies and wireless service providers) are helping to drive IP conversion in the security industry: the advantages people have at home are desired at work, too. Public and private entities are sharing access to video and security systems as standards are beginning to emerge making this possible (open platform VMS). Video imaging is being used for more than security: VMS is becoming a business enabling technology. The transition from legacy analogue equipment to IP video solutions is marching forward due to “total package” offerings including analytics; also higher virtualisation, edge and cloud based storage. The Internet of things (IoT) and home automation are combining huge numbers of devices to our online data; major players like Apple, Google/Nest, Amazon and Samsung are investing in the smart home.
Chinese vendor dominance in the security industry
Influences from the consumer environment will drive more ease-of-use in security applications. There will be continued vendor and channel consolidations. Chinese vendor dominance will continue for low-end cameras and simple installations.
| Chinese solutions are ripe to move into open platforms for better interoperability among other security components |
Body worn camera technology has been proprietary, similar to traditional CCTV: These solutions are ripe for moving into the open platform paradigm for better interoperability among other security components. Police in the U.S. are moving away from expensive, custom-only PSIM solutions to smart wall command centres with geo-spatial representations (using GPS) and interactive mapping with weather, traffic flow displayed, and beacon alerts to dispatch officers.
Milestone Systems in 2015 – new product launches and community engagement
2015 has been a tough market for many with the Chinese price pressures. However, Milestone increased our growth rate and expanded our service offerings along with the number of employees. We launched all-new, free eLearning for the Milestone Husky and XProtect Smart Client to quickly build up expertise for our users. In 2016 we will have more frequent product releases and even more Milestone community engagement, including on-site beta testing with our solution partners’ integrations. New training and certification courses will be available, too: self-paced online, webinar and face-to-face – all role- and task-based for optimal performance on the job. More distributors and alliance partners are establishing their own brand offerings via OEM relationships.
There is a whole new world of opportunities ahead for Milestone and our partners. Video management software fits into a broad range of business management applications such as enterprise resource management, operations and supply chain management and also in customer relationship management. The adoption is speeding up as vendors and system integrators learn to include both security and business solutions in the offerings. The key opportunity for the Milestone partner network participants is to shift the conversation with customers from cost to business value and to generate interest in larger investments in new technology and solutions for an enhanced business purpose.
See the full coverage of 2015/2016 Review and Forecast articles here