Security Integrators today are inundated with advice, trends and dire warnings that if they don’t stay on top of this fast-paced and ever-changing landscape, their business will fall behind. As industry press, we are more than guilty of contributing to the noise. While it is done with nothing but the best of intentions, I realize it can start to get overwhelming.

Reading through this year’s State of the Market: Video Surveillance, might feel like a roll call of industry buzzwords:

• “Scalability”
• “Convergence”
• “Trusted advisor”
• “Integration”
• “Unified”
• “Interoperability”
• “Cloud”
• “Consultative selling”
• “AI”

And the list could go on. I would imagine being an integrator today is a bit like the old saying, “keeping up with the Joneses,” a phrase that — according to Google — originated in a popular comic strip by Pop Momand, first published in 1913, and referred to the pressure to match your neighbors’ social status and possessions.

The security industry thrives when everyone is embracing innovation, learning new skills and continuing to find new ways to solve customer problems.

But in this case, the “Joneses” are your competitors, who you imagine to be more prepared, more informed, more technologically advanced or more plugged in than your company.

But here’s the thing. We now know those Jones families probably felt the same about their neighbors. Maybe they were in debt up to their eyeballs to manage their lifestyle, or had other challenges such as health issues, job stress, or family difficulties. No one had it “easy.” It just looked that way from the outside.

The same is true of most security companies.

As SDM Managing Editor Bri Wilson writes in her story, “Overall, the video market is set to be dynamic in 2026 — because where opportunity lives, challenges follow. Integrators expect to come head-to-head with cybersecurity requirements, data privacy concerns, workforce shortages, increasing commoditization, scalability, unification, network and bandwidth, and client education about available technologies, especially AI.”

And that is exactly why we present so much information on trends, technology and best practices, and why we write these in-depth State of the Market articles year after year. Everyone is navigating the same ocean. Some may be paddling faster, or have a bigger yacht, but it is the same water.

What’s more, the security industry “Joneses” may be in competition with one another, but they are also keen to lift each other up and help each other out. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have heard the phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The security industry thrives when everyone is embracing innovation, learning new skills and continuing to find new ways to solve customer problems.

So, grab a cup of coffee and carve out some time to read this valuable piece on the video surveillance market. You might discover some new insights to help you become someone else’s Joneses — and most importantly, learn new ways to build the best version of your business for what your customers are looking for today, tomorrow and in the next several years.