Remember when an end user’s security director was the go-to contact for an access control sale and the information technology (IT) manager was brought in to consult on the network requirements? In the enterprise solution space, that model has turned on its head in the past couple of years.
“At one time the security team was responsible for decision making and the IT group was an influence,” says Ron Oetjen, president, Intelligent Access Systems, an integrator in Garner, N.C. “That has reversed in the past two to three years and more often the decision-maker is the IT group and the influencer is the corporate security team. Everything is based on the IT infrastructure and they are applying the same principles to access control that they use to select any kind of networking technology.”