Plenty To See At ASIS

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Sep 16, 2008

The face of security is changing and technology is the reason. Maybe the most interesting difference comes from new Panasonic president JM Alain, who says the company is now focusing on best of breed by being prepared to go out and find a solution if the company can’t provide such a solution. This, of course, will be determined on a customer to customer basis.

In his own words, Panasonic is moving away from a particular box solution, and is prepared to go get a solution. He also said the company is now prepared to get in front of the customer in order to prevail in a competitive market.

Alain comes to Panasonic from the integrator side of security to lead the Japanese firm. He said in the past few months he has been to Japan several times and insists there is a great amount of support from the corporate boardroom where solutions are “a heck of a lot more important,” than a failure to help the customer.

“We’re not doing our job is we don’t help the customer tie it all together. We’ve got a great brand of products that we can tie together, as opposed to running to H.264,” Alain said. “I think like an integrator. We won’t win if we don’t provide the customer with solutions.”

I’m always looking for innovation and creative solutions at the tradeshow, and have run across the newly designed desk system from Middle Atlantic Products. Yes, this does have plenty of application to the industry. There are lots of employees who sit behind a desk.

The LCD desk system caught my eye because it has an ergonomic flare with sculpted corners for operator comfort and the flexibility to serve from small surveillance applications to large-scale command and control environments.

Pre-Show Gala
My thanks to HID for hosting an incredible party at the Georgia Aquarium the evening prior to ASIS. Tabbed the Big Blue Splash, HID pulled out all the stops to entertain customers at this incredible aquarium.

Beginning Oct. 1, our Web site (www.secprodonline.com) will showcase a blog with Brivo president Steve Van Till. I had the opportunity to visit with Van Till in his Bethesda, Md., office a week ago to get this project off the ground.

The beginnings of the blog will begin with IP-based access control. IP-based products are proliferating in the security industry, but there are differences, and blogging with the Brivo boss should prove interesting.

ASIS has been a whopper of a success, and I look forward to reporting from the second day of the show.