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Q 1 2 0 1 6 7 Q1 T ime and money — people are always seeking ways to save or gain both, and this is also evident in enterprise operations. As government agencies deal with ever tightening budgets and seek to increase efficiency, a crucial part is to achieve optimal, comprehensive security while saving these two precious commodities. In terms of enterprise security, a unified platform accomplishes both while adding multiple other benefits that drive return-on- investment and reduce total cost of ownership. A unified security platform blends various devices and solutions into a single, intuitive platform that simplifies operations, giving the immediate benefit of greater efficiency. Users are able to manage many different systems from a single interface, saving time because users are no longer jumping from one screen to another for the sake of investigation, or responding to a situation in real time. Additional time savings is achieved by streamlining workflows and processes, allowing enterprises to do more with existing resources, resulting in additional savings. If the security department can do just as much or more with the resources already budgeted for, there is no need to invest time or money into training more personnel, or learning new solutions. Investing in a security solution should not be all about saving money. It is critical to also reduce initial investment to ensure the enterprise achieves its security goals while obtaining, processing and using critical information as quickly and accurately as possible is the key. Integrating access control Video and Access Control: A Case for Unifed Platforms By Mitchell Kane, President, Vanderbilt Industries technologies with video surveillance and alarm monitoring via a unified platform enhances situational awareness, enabling operators to see when an alarm is triggered and immediately view the location of the alarm trigger with its associated video. Seeing these events take place simultaneously, the operator quickly gathers the necessary information to make a real-time decision on how to address the event. These intuitive functionalities provide enterprises greater control of overall security. THE BENEFITS OF NETWORKED ACCESS CONTROL In addition to integrating various security systems together into a unified platform, end users are finding ways to streamline the installation process by introducing wireless or online locks for better networked access control. Today's access control users expect more of a system than a one-size-fits-all solution that is cumbersome to operate and expensive to scale. Integrators are responding with more customized solutions that incorporate a blend of online and wireless locks to better suit each customer's specific needs. Wireless offline locks use a wireless protocol to communicate with a system's central hub, and provide an added level of flexibility. Additionally, they can be quickly and easily added to an access control solution without the significant financial and time investment involved with running wire. Another option, online locks, which can also be wireless, and are networked with the rest of a facility's access control system, enabling decision-making to occur on the central hub, rather than at the door. These devices provide greater capabilities, including remote management, automatic alerts and different user access levels. Both wireless and online locks work hand-in-hand to help provide end users with real-time reporting capabilities and the ability to streamline response. The flexibility of both of these options gives end users the ability to design a system in a way that best suits the facility and the end user's budget. Simplification and unified platforms save end users time and money by integrating many security applications – such as video and access control data – into a single platform. Going further, wireless and online locks allow more and more end users the freedom and flexibility needed to integrated more options for their facilities. This empowers the end user to rapidly respond to emerging situations based on various pieces of the event puzzle coming together to tell the full story.