by Joan Engebretson
May 1, 2008
Access control is not an area in which central stations traditionally have been involved. But that's changing now that more end user organizations have wide area data connections capable of supporting IP communications. Increasingly security dealers and systems integrators are finding a new source of recurring monthly revenue by offering remote monthly management of their access control accounts - either through their own central station or by using a wholesale central station that offers access control services.
Many business customers welcome the opportunity to offload system management to their security dealer or systems integrator. Smaller businesses are particularly good candidates for central station managed access control, as they typically do not have dedicated staff to handle access control system changes and software upgrades.
"If end users are not interfacing with their access control system on a regular basis, they can forget how to do it," notes Kevin Stone, chief operating officer for Doyle Security Systems, a Rochester, N.Y.-based security integrator that operates its own central station. "And if someone quits in the middle of the night, we can take the person off the system right away."