Soupergirl is the brainchild of former stand-up comedian turned soup maker Sara Polon. After reading Michael Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Polon decided to get involved in the local food movement.

The typically steady fire and life safety industry saw growth in 2019, with overall global revenues surpassing $7.5 billion, according to David Gonzalez, research analyst, physical security and critical communications, Omdia, London.

AlarmHive launches a free, high-level support, tailored software as a service specifically focused on the needs of security dealers and integrators.

NFPA just released a new product via an online demo called NFPA LiNK. The product is a digital version of the National Fire Protection Association’s standards, and allows users to access, research and share standards and changes to help them do their jobs better, while cutting out the guesswork for compliance.

Recurring revenue within the alarm industry has been the lifeblood of alarm dealers for decades. On the integration side of the physical security industry, however, many security integrators have historically had little or no recurring revenue.

Security systems integrators work in a plethora of vertical markets, implementing diverse security and safety systems to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. To meet these needs and exceed client expectations, integrators’ suppliers play a large role.

This year’s Monitoring Center Excellence Awards looked a bit different than usual. While the awards have historically been announced live at the Electronic Security Expo (ESX) annually held in the summer, due to COVID-19 the in-person awards were canceled, along with ESX.

Last year was a year of revenue growth for many security integrators ranked on the 2020 Top Systems Integrators Report. For some, it was their best year of revenue growth in company history, and for others, the market was flat yet steady.

In this issue, SDM presents the annual Top Systems Integrators Report, which ranks security integrators by their North American systems integration revenue of the previous year (2019). This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Top Systems Integrators Report, which was first launched by SDM in 1996.