It’s August, and for many areas of the U.S., it’s the hottest month of the year, although this year seems set to outdo itself in the temperature department! As I write this, many of you are “enjoying” the triple digit temperatures out in Las Vegas, while seeing the hottest new technology in-person for the first time in over a year.

No doubt some of the most sought-after new products and solutions on the show floor — especially in video surveillance — featured the latest in analytics, artificial intelligence and deep learning. Want to know more about what this technology can do for your customers? Look no further than this month’s cover story, The Impact of Analytics on Security.

“Over the past year, awareness and understanding of AI has increased, both in regards to machine learning and deep learning,” says Ryan Gregory, director of solutions and services at Axis Communications, in the article. “Accordingly, many end users have heightened expectations around the performance of analytics, mostly based on trends and experiences in the consumer electronics space. In many instances, people have come to rely upon these analytics in their daily lives — speech recognition for audio commands or text conversion; optical character recognition for extracting data from print; and facial ID to unlock computer devices. These more common and practical uses have created greater interest, expectations and potential use cases for analytics.”

Installing newer video technology like analytics also brings with it some challenges, particularly where you are working with fiber optics. In Understanding Fiber Optics for Video SDM columnist and contributing author Dave Engebretson writes, “The overall growth of surveillance video has greatly increased in the past few years, as video analytics, megapixel cameras, and other innovations are causing more customers install new or upgrade existing surveillance systems.” Engebretson discusses how using fiber optics can make video projects simpler, quicker and more cost effective.

Another technology that has been heating up recently as companies figure out how to bring people back to work in-person, is visitor management. In Getting the Most out of Visitor Management Managing Editor Courtney Wolfe writes, “While offices may have been closed for most of 2020 and even 2021, businesses are finally preparing to welcome employees back, and tracking who enters and exits the building has become more important than ever.”

Other don’t-miss features this month include The Monitoring Center Excellence Awards featuring profiles of the winners and runners-up in all categories; and the Top Systems Integrator’s Brand Report, listing the manufacturers and distributors the top integrators use most.

As the summer of 2021 comes to a close and turns to fall, I hope it brings with it cooler temperatures; but I think it is a sure bet the security market will stay hot.

Were you at ISC West? What was the best new technology you saw there? Email me or drop us a note on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. //