Growing up in the 80’s carried with it a love for some of the most iconic movies of the era. In my opinion, there has not been a single era I can look back on and see more bad hair, bad clothes, bad teeth, but some of the BEST one-liners you could ask for. You saw the birth of some of the best quotable movies ever conceived such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Top Gun and Stand by Me. Ladies, do I even need to mention Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, Footloose or the Princess Bride? A movie that you probably won’t find on a top 25 list but was a classic around our home was Mr. Mom. Michael Keaton played Jack Butler, you know back when he was still funny and had not lost all joy and only played evil characters? Kenny Butler, the youngest boy of the Butler family carried around his security blanket called a “woobie.” Kenny cannot imagine life without his woobie. At one point in the film Jack, caring for his son, sits him down and has a “man to man” talk about the woobie. “I understand that you little guys start out with your woobies and think they’re great…and they are, they are terrific. But pretty soon, a woobie isn’t enough. You’re out on the street trying to score an electric blanket, or maybe a quilt. Next thing you know you are strung out on bedspreads kid, and that’s serious.”
This fatherly advice given to Kenny addresses how hard change can be. When we have something in our lives that is always constant, sometimes we cannot imagine life without it. We have not known our daily routine in any other way and therefore the idea of change, even for the better, can be scary. Thoughts arise in our minds like, “I have never done that before,” or “what if making that change actually makes things worse than they are today?” These thoughts are normal worries associated with change.
The same feelings may arise when it comes to transitioning to the cloud-managed platforms. Cloud security products have become a major part of the security industry. Yes, there are questions about network security integrity, bandwidth, availability, and utilization. But what about hybrid solutions that allow users to keep local storage of their video, access control and even alarm data onsite while managing all systems remotely from a cloud portal? These products have allowed for a bridge away from the traditionally comfortable and into a new way of managing users, data, and even receiving support from integrators like NAVCO. At NAVCO we have seen a surge in cloud-managed products that present solutions to customer issues in a very elegant way. These systems increase visibility into the health of deployed systems, enterprise wide. Users can be updated instantaneously or moved from one level of permissions to another with a couple of clicks of a mouse from anywhere in the world. You have a service issue? NAVCO can troubleshoot those issues in real time when customers share health alerts or request service calls. What would a 60% reduction in truck rolls do for your available security budget and goals for your systems? Would this add some room to finally upgrade to IP? NAVCO can help with that too!
Cloud-managed applications open the door to improved efficiencies in managing your system’s health, and users by giving administrators good information faster and allowing you the flexibility of handling issues right away instead tackling a pile of them when you “get back to the office.” Change can be hard. It takes time to learn new systems. Giving up the “woobie” of traditional system architecture does require a qualified partner who has walked alongside many different customers from many different market verticals as they transition to cloud-managed platforms. NAVCO can be that trusted partner to help with that transition and make sure you don’t get “strung out on bedspreads!”
David McVicker – David McVicker started with NAVCO in the spring of 2010. Over the last 10 years he has specialized in consulting with customers to design, install and service best in class security solutions tailored for their business. Today he serves as the Group Sales Manager for the Central Region at NAVCO.
