In January of each year, the President of the United States delivers the annual State of the Union address, without fail declaring the union to be strong. In security, the same can be said for the state of the video surveillance industry in recent years. Strong growth has become a hallmark of this segment for the last several years, and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue to be the case.

In this year’s market, growth is coming from newer technologies including emergency communications systems (ECS) and mass notification systems (MNS), carbon monoxide (CO) products and legislation, Internet protocol (IP) and wireless options.

Someone once suggested that to get an invitation to a party you really wanted to attend you should offer to contribute something to the party. If the video market’s predicted strong year in 2014 is the kind of “party” access control is hoping to attend, then the market has tapped into that principle, contributing a strong argument for security systems that integrate both video and access control.

When Google purchased Nest Labs Inc. for $3.2 billion late last year, some security dealers groaned while others, such as John Loud, president, LOUD Security, Atlanta, positively accepted the news.

In 1929, Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy proposed the theory that the modern world was “shrinking” due to ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances, which is the original version of six degrees of separation.

The average access control system lasts 10 years. Additionally, the average customer wants to do more with less within continuingly tight budgets.