For the first time since the pre-COVID summer of 2019, Genetec gathered the world’s security trade press for a “press summit,” held this year February 6-7 in the company’s newly opened Washington, D.C. Experience Center. And as members of the press have come to anticipate from past events, Genetec stayed true to its global principals, taking us on a journey of ideas and concepts from Asia to Africa to the United States — all culminating in an in-depth preview of the newest offering from the company: Security Center SaaS.
Starting off day one, Vice President of Marketing Andrew Elvish highlighted what the company sees as a “seismic shift” in the security industry not seen since the transition from analog to IP in the early 2000s. This shift, of course, is to the cloud.
Elvish also introduced attendees to a term many weren’t familiar with, but would hear several times throughout the presentations. Shibumi is a Japanese aesthetic principle of “effortless elegance and simplicity.” Why that term was relevant would become clear later on in the day; but for now Elvish mentioned it in passing, along with the less “peaceful” expression “creative destruction” — all by way of describing how Genetec has gotten to where it is in the marketplace today.
“Genetec is collectively known as the ‘wrecking crew,’ Elvish said. “Creative destruction is what gets us out of bed in the morning. … That is part of what gets us excited as a company.” Elvish showed a slide from Omdia demonstrating how Genetec has moved from No. 10 in the marketplace in 2016 to No 2 by 2022 for both access control and ALPR solutions, and has been ranked No. 1 in video since 2017.
“What these numbers show is a change in mindset,” he said. “Genetec came to market with a unique selling prospect for unification, not integration. We were not bolting on things, we were putting it into a single pane of glass. … As we were telling that story, [customers] first knew us as a video company. Then they started using our access control, which was built into one system and very attractive.”
But no matter how elegant the solution, there is a challenge faced by both manufacturers and integrators in the security space, Elvish said: the consumption gap. “This is the gap between “the cool stuff we build” and “stuff that gets used,” he explained. “Why is this a concern? Because the more people recognize the value of what we do at Genetec, the more sticky it becomes,” he said.
Elvish also took attendees through the results of the company’s latest survey, the State of Physical Security 2024, released in November 2023. This report was based on responses from 5,500 end users and channel partners — up from just 500 responses the first year the company produced the report in 2020.
“The good news is our integration partners are seeing OpEx budgets continue to rise; the bad news is that cyber threats are continuing to increase,” Elvish explained, noting that 31 percent of end users indicated their organization was targeted by cybercriminals in 2023.
“This is highly concerning, but it is something we have known for a long time and one of the challenges we face,” Elvish said. “We call it the security of security — the IT security of physical security.” On a positive note, he said more channel partners are taking action on cybersecurity, but there is still more work to be done.
Another highlight of the study, Elvish explained, was the numbers on cloud adoption: “What is happening with the channel partners is that 39 percent are now leading with cloud-based; 52 percent offer it and 74 percent anticipate offering it. This is a bigger change than from coaxial to IP.”
What’s more, he added, “We are seeing cloud across every size company. The biggest demand is amongst the larger customers. It is part of a bigger change going on in the market.”
In closing his portion of the presentation, Elvish highlighted one more number. “When I was reviewing the data from this report, this really stood out: 15 percent already store their video footage both locally and the cloud, compared to just 4 percent the previous year. That is a 275 percent increase in just one year.”
Next up, Michel Chalouhi, vice president of sales, global, talked more on the importance to Genetec of its channel partners, particularly how the company would like to add “ease” to the integrator’s lives and projects.
“A lot of our partners are trying to find ways to grow, and 52 percent are looking in that cloud direction,” Chalouhi said. “The integrator is as much our customer as the end users. That is who we need to scale to and how we get to the next stage of our mission. It is very important for us to understand the way they procure, install and maintain the product. We want to make it easy to do business with Genetec from both the end user and channel partner perspective.”
All of this was the wind up to the big reveal of the day: an under-wraps preview of Genetec’s new Security Center SaaS, which was formally unveiled February 21, and will be fully rolled out at ISC West.
Christian Morin, vice president of product engineering, explained the “why” of the new offering.
“Cloud is the buzz in the security industry and there is a lot of ink around that topic. There are a lot of things already in the cloud but security is kind of the ‘new’ thing. We are starting to hit the inflection point for physical security.”
Morin was quick to point out, however, that even within the security industry cloud is not completely new. “Genetec has had some form of cloud for 10 years,” he said, adding that cloud consists of five key characteristics: rapid elasticity; broad network access, resource pooling; on-demand self-services; and measured service.
Cloud itself is not the end goal, Morin said. “Cloud is the means to an end,” he explained. “What is the purpose of cloud? People want the ‘easy button’ and cloud provides that ease.”
Morin explained that part of that consumption gap Elvish mentioned earlier is because of the difficulty in installing and deploying updates. In addition, channel partners want increased efficiency and ease of procurement and deployment.
“What we are announcing is we are taking all of our cloud offerings and bringing them together as one single unified offering called Security Center SaaS,” Morin said.
Security Center SaaS is in the cloud, but designed to be anything from on-prem to hybrid to full cloud, depending on the customer’s needs.
“It is a set of appliances,” Morin said. “It is not about being cloud-first, but being hybrid-first. We don’t care where the software runs. The appliances are the vehicle that allows you to run these on-premises. It is a continuum that allows you to seamlessly shift where things live, according to the user.
What’s more, he added, there will be no more “version numbers” with Security Center SaaS. “As capabilities become available they will be turned on for those that need them,” he explained.
Next up was what is always a highlight of these press summits: the fireside chat with Genetec founder, president and CEO, Pierre Racz, which as usual included a wide-ranging variety of topics. He started by bringing the conversation back to that concept of “shibumi,” explaining that this new offering was designed with that concept in mind.
“Shibumi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that means understated beauty,” Racz said.
He also touched on one of his favorite love-to-hate topics: AI — which as anyone who has heard Racz speak on this topic before will know he says stands for “absolute ignorance.”
Racz gave an example of this called “giraffing,” which is based on the idea that AI thinks any picture of Africa should have a giraffe in it. “If you take a picture of anything in Africa and ask AI how many giraffes are in it there will always be a number because it is trained on giraffes. There is bias. … But if you let the human supply the imagination and creativity you can do great things.” Racz calls this “IA” or “intelligent automation.”
Racz also touched on the topic of cybersecurity aspect of Genetec’s product offerings, which are also designed in a way to be “easy” and help ensure compliance.
“We are making it hard for our customers to do that wrong thing,” Racz said. “We no longer have default passwords. We generate a random one, and you have to go in and change it.”
This is one example, he said, of how the company is designing solutions that will get both integrators and end users to “up their game” when it comes to cybersecurity.
This led to the next presentation, which was a frightening look into hacker-land and why initiatives like this are important.
Vincent De Noiret, application security program manager, detailed some of the latest gadgets from the most recent Black Hat conventions, such as the Flipper Zero, which can copy a hotel or other access control card in seconds — which he demonstrated in a video he took that morning from the hotel.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent showing off the features of the Genetec SOC at the experience center as well as a presentation going into more detail on the new offering.
Judging from the presentations and focus on cloud, cybersecurity and making products that are elegant, simplistic and easy to sell, install, maintain and use, Genetec’s newest offering seeks to meld the concept of “shibumi” with the “easy button” — with hopefully no giraffes in sight, unless they are really there.
For more information, visit: genetec.com.
