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Swiping a card to gain access to a company building is now a perfectly accepted feature of everyday corporate life. Over the years, we have all grown familiar with the routine and the advantages it brings to access control.
But where cards were once used exclusively to open doors, controlling who went where and when in a building, now they can be used for a wide variety of extra functions.
Developments in card technology allow for the card that gives you access at your workplace to be used for recording attendance, gaining access to your PC, as your identity card and even for cash-less transactions at a vending machine. The role of the multi-function card has evolved as card technology has developed. As ever, by pushing this technology envelope, we are seeing huge and dramatic gains in efficiency with more streamlined organisations and reduced staff numbers.
Today, IT systems across the world are connected via high speed Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) and there is an increasing expectation that non-core applications such as security and access control - once the sole domain of the security manager – should share the corporate communications infrastructure.
This model also extends to the capture and dissemination of data. End-users have come to expect raw data such as staff details to be input only once and for this information to be inherited by all systems.
Organisations looking to eliminate inefficiency no longer find it acceptable to have to re-input the same information into the personnel system, the access control system and ID card system etc, with standalone applications - each with its own bespoke wiring requirements, unique database, dedicated PC and printer. Now market-proven these systems are more secure, easier to administer and more efficient overall than closed legacy systems.
In general the manufacturers and suppliers of security systems have been slow to design for enterprise wide applications, preferring instead to produce closed solutions. So that although technological advances have produced a range of proximity and smart cards, fingerprint recognition readers and high-speed networks, the fundamental layout of a typical access control system has not altered since 1977.
In the 1970’s and 80’s a control panel (a microprocessor based circuit board used to control access through a door and housed in a metal box together with a power supply) would service two card readers and one or two doors. A number of these control panels could be connected to a mini computer using low speed 2 or 4 wire data link (often erroneously referred to as a network). Today a control panel can be connected to a PC running a Windows program with capacity to accommodate 4 or even 8 doors. Little else has changed!
Why change? Whilst it would be true to say that those elements make up a system that give an acceptable level of performance, other commercial pressures are forcing us to adopt alternative system architecture.
For example, one of the biggest property issues for commercial organisations today is space. How do we fit ourselves and all the necessary accoutrements of modern commercial life into the available workplace? And how can developers maximise the lettable or usable space within a commercial building to maximise their profit?
A large access control installation will require a significant amount of hardware to be accommodated into a building infrastructure. A typical installation will require all the door hardware (readers, locks etc) plus dedicated cabling, metal enclosures for power supplies and controllers - all to be situated as unobtrusively as possible. Once the computer network as well as fire alarm, air conditioning, telephone, intruder systems, etc. have been installed, few modern commercial premises have enough free closet space left to mount access control enclosures.
So door controller enclosures are typically installed in the ceiling void close to the door – this practice is fine – so long as there’s room. But with office space at a premium, increasingly ceiling voids are becoming shallower, particularly so in new and refurbished buildings.
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