Video is the darling of the dealer-run or third party central station, and while it’s not new technology by any stretch of the imagination it’s a growing category offering innovative ways to bring sight, sound and detailed visual information and data to security monitoring.

With a particular focus on the application of video surveillance technologies in central station monitoring, Video Monitoring TODAY features perspective from industry experts, profiles of leading companies, coverage of trends and issues, and relevant news. This first issue is dedicated to fully exploring the opportunity that video monitoring presents to dealers and integrators, whether you have your own central station or use a third-party service.

COPS Monitoring, Williamstown, N.J., recently announced it is building dedicated mPERS monitoring centers inside its N.J. facility and one other site (to be announced), from which it will be offering mPERS to its dealers. Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS, discussed the move in an exclusive Q&A with SDM.

SentryCon, SentryNet’s annual dealer conference held in Biloxi, Miss., was held April 23-26 with more than 225 security industry professionals in attendance. The main focuses for this year’s conference included how to deal with current challenges facing the security industry and how to increase business and RMR.

Acadiana Security Plus (ASP), based in Lafayette, La., is a long-standing, traditional alarm installation company with its own central monitoring station. The company’s primary focus had always been the residential alarm market. The focus following that was small- to mid-size businesses, though it never reached the level of success the company enjoyed in the residential space. Company executives set out to change that.

With every set of opportunities comes an often equally matched set of challenges. This is especially true for security integrators today, as both an active economy and a never-ending list of security concerns continue to stimulate sales — all bolstered by end users’ desire to apply security technology across multiple business functions.