According to report author and market analyst Ewan Lamont, remote video monitoring is good news for central stations and suppliers to the industry: “Everybody is a winner with remote video monitoring services. Alarm dealers can make bigger margins on remote video services compared to alarm monitoring, as well as generating revenue from increased equipment sales, installation and maintenance. Customers who are able to replace guards with a monitored system are reportedly seeing return on investment in a relatively short period of time. As for customers that do not have a manned guard to replace, insurance companies are listing remote video monitoring as an equivalent substitute and reducing premiums accordingly. Even telcos are benefitting from supplying the extra bandwidth that the video transmission requires.”

So does this growth in video monitoring signal trouble for the manned guarding industry? Not necessarily, says Lamont: “Adding remotely monitored video to a manned guarding service allows a central station operator to watch multiple cameras, and then direct guards to where they are needed. This maximizes the area under surveillance, and allows the response to be focused where it is required.”

IMS Research predicts more and more service providers will add remote monitoring services to their portfolios over the next five years to take advantage of this trend. IMS Research’s recently completed report, “The Americas and EMEA Markets for Remote Monitoring Services – 2010 Edition” addresses this and other relevant topics in detail.