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A great leader’s character is more enduring than his or her dossier. While your ancestry and accomplishments may bring you notoriety and invitations, it is ultimately your aptitude for inspiring, energizing and connecting with people that draws them to you.

The first step in designing an intelligible voice system is to determine what type of ECS the building owner desires. The voice communication system often will include in-building fire EVACS, in-building mass notification, and a paging system to meet the day-to-day operational objectives.

Lighting control systems do not have to be elaborate to have a positive impact, enabling integrators to start at the level with which they are comfortable. Simply suggesting the move from old bulbs to LEDs can cut a lot from lighting costs, and that exponentially grows as more energy efficacy is enabled with lighting controls, King says.

In determining the best solution for a customer, “the big things are topology and what kind of communications they have on site,” comments Al Lewis, vice president of Okeechobee, Fla.-based dealer, Gator Security.

For the past several years, talk about converging physical and logical access control has been mostly just that — talk. Budget constraints, perceived lack of need and an absence of cohesive, affordable solutions have made it difficult for integrators to find much traction in this market.

Although Wi-Fi might be what most often comes to mind when talking about wireless cameras, video transmission isn’t the only way in which a camera might be considered “wireless.” Battery-powered and solar-powered cameras with battery backup are available to meet certain customer needs.

Another trend in the lighting space is to maintain a low-noise color image in low light rather than switching to black-and-white or changing to an IR illuminator setting. One way this is made possible is with better sensors, specifically larger sensors with more pixels.

These brand-usage lists were compiled from the 2014 Top Systems Integrators Report. Earlier this year, integrators were instructed to list their top three suppliers (both manufacturers and distributors, unprompted) in order of volume purchased from them.

The key to success though is connecting your customer service to an outstanding customer experience and paying attention to those often overlooked details.

Regardless of the basis on which cloud storage is charged for, remembering the basic model is perhaps the most important factor.