While the economic climate in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) has cooled with a broad-based regional decline in inflation and positive growth projections, many businesses and institutions are still incentivised to extract as much value from their infrastructure and resources as possible.
That includes value from physical security and network surveillance systems, which are crucial in protecting infrastructure, enforcing health and safety measures, and deterring criminal behaviour.
Physical security spending in the MENA region is expected to reach $3 billion by 2028, with growth in the Middle East fuelled by the number of construction activities and projects, smart cities, and technological advancements.
This growth illustrates physical security’s role in business activities and everyday life. Solutions can also give organisations a chance to save money, and they can do so by considering the total, actual cost of security investments.
Running the numbers
Several market drivers, including the availability of new technologies, pricing changes, new threats and updated risk assessments, and changes in operational footprint, drive companies’ budget allocations for physical security. This reflects the need for adaptability in an organisation’s budget and a need to maximise the return on initial investments.
Total cost of ownership (TCO) puts the actual cost of a single security product into full perspective. TCO encompasses everything related to any product or solution, including the initial purchase and installation, the product’s energy consumption, network resources and management, ongoing and spot maintenance, and the salaries of the people employed to maintain it.
Failure to conduct comprehensive TCO analyses leading to purchases and deployments may result in severe consequences. These include miscalculating budgets, purchasing unnecessary products or components, and generally underestimating or overestimating long-term needs surrounding security.
Security that comes at a cost
According to TCO analyses of security systems of Axis customers worldwide, including the UAE, system costs before deployment account for only around 30% of the total TCO, with the remaining 70 percent of costs occurring during operation.
Therefore, TCO is a powerful tool for customers when calculating the cost of a project or tender. Imagine the potential scale at play here, like a network of video cameras that provide surveillance across a metropolitan area. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of devices, require regular repairs or downtime periods, which could further impact urban activities such as public transportation or emergency response services.
In use cases like this, the value of a system even extends to elements like reduced instances of criminal activity and suspicious behaviour.
The rate at which technology evolves is also a factor. A device being rendered obsolete can compromise long-term investments in surveillance projects. Therefore, future-proofing systems is essential and can be accomplished via open standards in technology and system architectures. The lifecycle of an effective system should factor in a level of flexibility, a quality that all modern business operations need to exhibit.
Making the most of your investment
Determining TCO for security systems should never be limited to checking the warranty on a piece of hardware. Rather, it should be part of a comprehensive consideration that, ideally, leads to significant cost savings and an improved return on investment.
From the get-go, organisations should identify solutions based on the value they add to operations. They should calculate how those solutions may influence existing infrastructure and estimate their cost, leading up to making a final, informed decision.
Organisations do not need to do this alone. During this process, they can identify vendors and partners that can assist and have an active stake in successfully implementing solutions.
With a heightened focus on value, enterprises in the Middle East can make and achieve the most with their security and network surveillance systems, contributing to business growth and an enhanced security landscape.
