Articles by Karyn Hodgson

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.

Across the industry, manufacturers are being pushed by end users to be more open, Reich says. “We are major advocates of driving the open communication standards and embracing them both from the standpoint of our technology and helping as an industry drive the maturity of the standards so they do provide the value to integrators and end users.

For years, the most common integration method has been for one manufacturer to get another’s application programming interface (API) or software development kit (SDK) and make the two systems talk.

The process of introducing these technologies to end users and implementing them in real-world projects are where many integrators find themselves today.

For many integrators, door and lock hardware is a mysterious thing best left to the locksmith professionals — but that can leave money and opportunity on the table.

Facilities of all types looking to secure their buildings typically look to CCTV, access control and intrusion detection as their top three “go-to” technologies.

Wireless locks today are much more than the standalone, battery-operated locks of the past. While they still are experiencing a few growing pains, more often they are being considered a viable alternative to — and even replacement for — hardwired locks.

When it comes to access control products and systems, whether the end user is a small 5- to 10-door business or a multi-city enterprise, chances are they ultimately will use only a small fraction of the feature-rich products that are available to them. It is far more important for the system to fit seamlessly into the larger business and its goals.

It’s hard to go about daily life now without hearing about “the cloud.” Apple, Amazon, Dropbox, computers and even your local bank now offer cloud storage. People use the cloud every day, whether they realize it or not, says John Szczygiel, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Brivo Systems LLC, Bethesda, Md.