Feature The Security Matters Interview Read more online at www.securitymattersmagazine.com
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and wider on business outcomes.
Responsibility for results will inevitably
become a strong driving factor.
What are your thoughts
about some of the
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technology shifts that we’re seeing
in the industry at present such as a
much greater reliance on the
cloud, for example?
First and foremost, we in the
security industry are impacted by
TJ
similar patterns and technological
advancements that have affected the
tech industry, whether in terms of Big
Data or Artificial Intelligence and so on.
What we also have to acknowledge is
that incubation periods nearly always
take longer than we would either wish
for or prefer. When cloud computing
arrived to influence corporate
structures, for instance, it didn’t take off
as fast as many would have liked.
Five years from now, I’m certain that
cloud will be an important part of our
industry and our product offerings, but
it will be a slow burn. Just because we
might all think that the cloud is great,
that doesn’t necessarily mean customers
will like it or even that their financial
processes are suited to it.
IT is just one consideration for the
customer buying video technology, as
indeed are subscription-based offerings.
Who are we as an industry to tell a CFO
how to allocate their free cashflow
whether they go into a subscription-based
model or a CAPEX model?
What role do you see the
industry playing as the world
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opens up again post-pandemic?
As an industry, we will remain a
strong player in securing society.
TJ
The pandemic will accelerate the move
towards systems functioning beyond a
pure security remit. We’ve already seen
this with temperature checking regimes
at airports and other transport hubs, for
example. Companies are looking at
technology around face mask
recognition, crowd management and
control and social distancing. Those
elements beyond reactive security will
expand. Video technology will become
the core of use cases for our customers.
Going forward, what sectors
do you see holding promise
SM
for the security industry and,
indeed, Milestone in particular?
Focusing on key verticals is
always an interesting conversation
TJ
to pursue because we sell our solutions
into pretty much all of them. That
doesn’t mean we are ‘verticalised’,
though. Much of what we do is the
delivery of horizontal offerings with
video management systems. When you
really look into the opportunities and
see how you can create additional
business outcomes for a certain industry
sector, you absolutely do need to
specialise. That’s my belief.
In the broader sense, we will see a
need in the entertainment and
hospitality environment which has been
one of the hardest hit by COVID-19.
There will be a need in cities and
healthcare, too. These sectors will look
towards video technology to support
business management so that they can
cope better in a future lockdown event.
The education sector will also look
towards video technology as an enabler.
What’s the future of education going to
look like? Can we build use cases to
support learning?
What do you think the
security industry can learn
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from other sectors such as IT?
The security industry has to get
over itself in the sense that, just
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because we’re passionate about our
products and offerings, this doesn’t
mean that they’re God’s gifts to our
customers. We may well deliver one of
the most important tools in the toolbox
used by our customers for business
management, but it’s not the only one.
We need to learn from the tech
industry that purpose and sustainability
are becoming core objectives for
customers and the public at large. Part
of this is driven by cyber security needs,
another by the new generation entering
the workforce. We need to acknowledge
and support it.
We can learn from many of the
mistakes made in the IT industry, but
we simply cannot sit back and wait for
everything to happen. We have to be
proactive. As an industry, we need to be
looking at how we produce and sell
technology responsibly and how it’s used
on a responsible basis. •
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