Administering access control can be a burden, and the industry is taking steps to address this concern. More than ever before, suppliers and integrators are looking at new ways to improve the end user experience, and access control as a service (ACaaS) fits this model.
Administering access control can be a burden, and the industry is taking steps to address this concern. More than ever before, suppliers and integrators are looking at new ways to improve the end user experience, and access control as a service (ACaaS) fits this model.
“Like all other products, access control will increasingly move to the cloud. This will eliminate the need for expensive on-site equipment and the associated labor and cabling costs,” said Paul Bodell, CEO of ECKey Smartphone Access Systems. “More companies will move to selling access control on a subscription and usage basis as opposed to a one-time installation with annual software upgrades model.”
Brivo Labs highlighted the success that ACaaS has brought to the company. “Our business, which is over 90 percent hosted access control, grows a minimum of 30 percent a year, and we don't see it slowing down,” said Lee Odess, Vice President of Marketing. IHS, meanwhile, forecasts there will be about 1.8 million total doors of ACaaS in the Americas by 2018.
According to IHS, geographically dispersed enterprises are looking more for cloud-based solutions, especially hybrid offerings — a mix of onsite management, monitoring, and hosted infrastructure. As a result, hybrid may see more growth as large systems adopt ACaaS, IHS said.