Security Sales & Integration August 2022 - 48

Management
Comprehending
Central Station
as a Service
Emerging hybrid and hosted central station services are bringing
valuable options to the forefront for security dealers. Find out how
and why CSaaS is changing the monitoring landscape.
By Peter Giacalone
I
This revelation
provides the
platform to
offer endless
possibilities to
dealers whether
they operate their
own monitoring
operations or not.
t's intriguing how drastically
during the past two or three decades
a dealer's decision of owning
and operating an in-house central
station has changed. In the past, such a dealer
at times felt pain when facing a competitor that
did provide in-house monitoring. As technology
progressed, many will argue that the script
has flipped.
The advanced, nationwide, third-party central
stations inherently offer more services and
streamlined communications than most independent
centers can justify providing themselves.
Certain wholesale centers have done an
extraordinary job in leveraging their size to step
up their technology and offerings while staying
focused on providing personal services. It is a
serious job and a big decision on selecting any
partner - and identifying a central station
partner is one of the biggest decisions a dealer
will have to make.
Compounding their comprehensive offerings
a select few monitoring companies, along
with their central station automation providers,
have teamed up to create hosting platforms that
have been listed under UL827A. This revelation
provides the platform to offer endless possibilities
to dealers whether they operate their own
monitoring operations or not. It's the new era of
central station as a service (CSaaS).
Now, an existing central station or a company
seeking to start up a new central station,
48
Security Sales & Integration AUGUST 2022
can maintain a UL Listed central station of
their own while hosting all their technology via
a UL827A Listed monitoring center. This not
only avoids what could be millions of dollars in
capital expenditure costs, it allows for a warm
start with tremendous support for the entire operation
and a reduction in operational expenses.
Currently UL has listed a handful of central
station hosts and host centers. At press time, they
are NMC, Rapid Response Monitoring Services
and Affiliated Monitoring. The host-only centers
are DICE, BOLD Group, Secure Global
Solutions (SGS), Innovative Business Software
(IBS) and Techevolution.
In some structures the offerings are more
comprehensive than a traditional SaaS subscription
of the software platform. A select few of
these UL827A Listed operations offer options
that include telecommunications, customer and
technical support, custom development and operator
redundancy. Let's take a closer look.
Real-World Hybrid Adoptions
As an advisor to companies considering hosting
or refreshing their central station operations or
monitoring options, I reached out to a few clients
open to sharing their experiences. I selected
some of the more challenging structures to
highlight, in contrast to less complicated structures
that are simpler to structure.
Bermuda Security Group (BSG) - In
2014, BSG, the largest security company on
securitysales.com
http://www.securitysales.com
Security Sales & Integration August 2022

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