What Happens In Vegas Won't Stay in Vegas

Apr 1, 2004 12:00 PM, LARRY ANDERSON, EDITOR

Visitors to Las Vegas this month were bombarded with colorful sights and sounds, passed crowds of people staring attentively at boxes with blinking lights, and saw large amounts of money at stake based on uncertain outcomes.

And all that was inside the hall at ISC-West, where the industry's latest bells and whistles were on prominent display to crowds sometimes more dense than those in the nearby casinos.

But based on the technology being displayed, it appears that betting on a prosperous and secure future for our industry promises a better return than any other odds offered on the strip.

It's all about networking and data, about multiple applications running together, about incorporating all the new technologies into the mix. It's about high-definition video, and cameras that can see in every direction, and computer systems that analyze video content and suggest a response. It's about bringing more information to the user in a more useful format and wherever he needs it, anywhere in the world. It's about applying the power of the computer to a wide variety of applications that make us all safer.

It's about tearing down the walls, whether it's the walls between suppliers or the walls between technologies or the walls between physical security and the IT department. Interoperability among systems has never been greater. What diverse technologies have in common is more important that what separates them. Access control and digital video are really the same thing, now — they're both information, bits and bytes, and they can be transmitted and analyzed and reacted to in much the same way. They can co-exist on the same computer system and their varied functionality can be tied together with the resulting combination being even more valuable to the user.

It's about computers and information, but it's also about gadgets. It's new-and-improved locks and little fingerprint readers. Mobile phones and PDAs can be a part of today's security systems, as can every other hand-held computer device. Flat-screen plasma monitors and GPS systems are part of the mix, as is any kind of card containing a computer chip.

A lot of what I saw at ISC-West represents potential that our industry has yet to realize. It takes time for the latest and greatest technologies to be embraced by the end-user community. What's possible and what's being used in the real world are sometimes far apart.

But seeing what's possible at ISC-West opens one's eyes to all the great things that will be happening at the end-user level in the months and years to come. Technology offers capabilities that were undreamed-of just several years ago. Watching the revolutionary transformation of our industry will be more entertaining than a Las Vegas magic show.

YOUR THOUGHTS

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• More from September's issue