For as long as we can remember, the integrator business has been built on breadth. An integrator picks up a line because an existing customer already owns it, because a bid has a brand name on it, or because saying no to a brand that does a lunch and learn at your office by an old sales rep at a new company feels like leaving money on the table, especially when “Tom” came with a lead in hand. Do that long enough and you end up carrying 75 lines, most of which you touch once a year, and only a few you’re really good at let alone selling.
In the cottage high-security industry, this made sense, and for many it still does. Specifications are written around brands, every project is a custom design, and the integrator is valued as the certified expert (and since we are speaking openly, manufacturers control distribution in markets for a lot of understood reasons) who can make any system work. In the era of electronic access control, complexity and control was the product, so the integrator who understood the most systems was the most valuable person in the room.
I believe that construct is about to split in two unlike anything we’ve seen before. In the Intelligence Era, which brings a mainstream market on top of the high-security market built around enterprise software, customers don’t buy the way the high-security market does, and the integrator's value is shifting from knowing every system to knowing one system so well the customer never has to think about it and manufacturers can rely on implicitly.
I like to start this focused on a basketball analogy and I will use a 7' Center from the modern era and a 5'5" Guard from the 50s and 60s.
If you don’t know basketball, I apologize, but I think you’ll see what I’m saying…Both were/are elite basketball players, but each was/is built for a different game…a different era. Same works for our market now. A company built for the old game can add a cloud product and a mobile app and call itself modern, but that is a 5’5” guard who took a clinic on how to dunk a ball and get rebounds. The lines, compensation plans, sales motion, service model, mentality, and P&L all belong to a body built for the old game. If you want a center for the modern era, you have to draft a center and build the team around that center. You don’t just train and train and train a 5’5” guard and hope it grows into a 7’ center.
I am not saying the guard is obsolete. High-security, spec-driven work is still the guards game, and it will be for years. It’s a great business and those that want to pursue it should. But it doesn’t mean we still don’t want and need 7’ centers. We may even want to mix some of those 7’ centers with those 5’5” guards and build an elite team. I’d recommend every manufacturer to do that. I am saying stop training 5’5” guards on RMR. They ain’t gonna be 7’ centers. It’s genetics and it’s ok.
And it’s not just wrong expectations we are applying here. The truth is, in this new mainstream market, the equation we use to do the math on how we operationalize has also changed.
The old math we used was:
revenue = lines carried x bids chased x win rate x project size. Every line was another lottery ticket, so more lines meant more shots. Nobody was wrong to run that math, because it rewarded them. It worked.
The new math we need to use is different. The new math is:
recurring revenue = accounts on your platform x modules per account x retention x services margin. Lines carried become accounts on your platform, because the manufacturer also creates the demand (and will soon be the main driver of lead generation). Bids chased become modules per account, because growth comes from expanding the customer you already have. Win rate becomes retention, because the money is in keeping the customer, not winning the job once. Project size becomes services margin, because AI is compressing the configuration work that used to fill an invoice.
In the old math, breadth adds. In the new math, depth compounds. Doesn’t mean one is bad and the other is good. It just means they are different, and you get to choose.
What a time to be in the industry!
So, why now? Because in the Intelligence Era, 3 things changed all at once. First, configuration of systems is no longer the moat. Cloud-native platforms and AI-assisted setup are taking over work that once required a certified technician, so the hours an integrator once billed for programming are shrinking. What remains is actual system integration, design, the customer relationship, and the services built on top of it, and services reward depth over breadth. Second, manufacturers now do business development directly with end users. Note: business development and sales are very different (although I do think selling direct will be more prevalent, I don’t think it will be anywhere near the size of teaming and dealer-executed). Verkada normalized this outloud in our industry (dirty secret: it’s been along for awhike), and others have followed and more will. When the brand creates demand and has deal flow, the integrator no longer needs 75 lines to have something to say when a project goes out to bid. The integrator's job becomes building their own lead hose + deploying, expanding, and servicing what the customer already chose. Third, our industry is starting to look like enterprise software, and enterprise software has already run this experiment and it’s preferred (if you believe in IT Convergence then you also believe in Market Change). Bluewolf built its business around Salesforce, and IBM acquired it. Cloud Sherpas built its business around Salesforce and Google, and Accenture acquired it. The vendor sends its focused partners leads, invests in their enablement, and treats them as an extension of its own go-to-market. The partner gets faster deployments, better margins, and a brand the customer already trusts.
And with single-sourcing you get…
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Repeatability. The same platform deployed 200 times produces playbooks, templates, and a level of quality that is impossible when every project touches a different stack. That repeatability then turns into predictability.
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Vendor investment. Manufacturers reward focus with leads, co-selling, enablement dollars, and early access. A partner who is 5% of a vendor's channel gets a portal login; a partner who is 30% gets a seat at the lead table and an ask to join their customer advisory board.
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Talent. It is far easier to hire, train, and certify people on one platform than on 75. Engineers also like being great at something, and that shows up in retention.
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Managed services. Recurring revenue depends on tooling, monitoring, and a consistent data model, and you cannot build those across dozens of unrelated APIs. This is where the integrator of the future makes its money.
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Accountability. The customer gets one party responsible for the outcome, which is what enterprise buyers already expect from every other software purchase.
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Valuation. Investors understand a focused, recurring-revenue partner of a leading platform and they will pay a multiple greater than we have right now. A generalist with 75 lines and project revenue is a harder story to tell. And want to see Convergint or even Wipro go nuts? They will when we have well disciplined single-sourced integrators where they can bolt on vs integrate.
Ok, so let’s say you are buying into my thesis. The next question may be, “How do I build it?”
Here’s what I would do…if you are an existing integrator, do not try to convert the whole company. Break off a division with its own P&L, its own leadership, and its own brand voice, and point it at one or two manufacturers. Your legacy customers still need you on the old stack, and a separate division lets you serve them while you build something new. This is how you avoid Sailing Ship Syndrome, where you spend the next 5 years improving the old model instead of starting the new one.
If you are new, I expect the founders to come from 4 places. Some will come from Wall Street and private equity, where people see a services roll-up with recurring revenue. Some will come from outside our industry entirely, like enterprise IT and the SI world. Some will be former employees of the brands themselves, who know the product better than anyone. And some will be integrators who leave the old model on purpose.
I saw this at VerkadaOne and have met others who are all in on Motorola. I’ve met people building large businesses around a single platform, and a couple of them are on track to pass $100 million. None of them looked like the integrators I grew up around.
It’s also fair to say this isn't for everyone (it is for manufacturers and service providers, but not every integrator). This is not a call for every integrator to single-source. Large multinational integrators serving global accounts across dozens of verticals have a different math entirely. Their scale is the diversification (and to be Pac-Man). Breaking that up to chase depth on one platform would be trading a real advantage for a fashionable one. I get it. The bigger case and opportunity here is for the local, regional, and national integrators still running the old math because nobody told them it changed.
And to be fair, there are also negatives and risks (just like there are when you carry 75 lines).
Here’s a starting list…
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Concentration risk. Your vendor's bad year becomes your bad year. If the manufacturer gets acquired, changes its channel terms, or stumbles, you have no diversification.
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Channel conflict. Manufacturers with direct sales teams can compete with their own partners for the same customer. Enterprise software manages this with contracts and territory rules, and our industry has less practice at it.
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Vendor leverage. The vendor decides your margin, your leads, and your tier, and it can change any of them. Program changes hit single-source partners much harder than multi-line ones.
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Lost bids. When a specification names a brand you don't carry, you don't get the job. A single-source integrator has to choose customers who buy on outcomes and not on spec, which shrinks the addressable market in the short term.
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Independence. Some customers hire an integrator because it is a neutral advisor. Once you sell one brand, your advice becomes conflicted, and you have to be honest about which customers still want a neutral advisor.
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Platform breadth. This model works when the manufacturer is a genuine platform, with access control, video, intercom, alarms, and software on one data model. A manufacturer with a single product line is a thin business to build around, and the vendor has to be big enough to carry you.
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Sunk cost. Training, certifications, and tooling are real investments that do not transfer if you have to change vendors.
All that said, these are known, manageable risks, and as I said above, every business decision and model has upsides and downsides. For this, the upside and opportunity are well worth the risk.
This is not only a decision for integrators. Manufacturers and service providers have to earn single-sourcing, not assume it. Throw out the dealer program built as a legal and financial exercise for product access. Replace it with co-selling commitments, account protection, program stability, and a real seat at the roadmap table. Make it about enablement. Make it a “franchise” where your integrators wake up thinking about you in the morning and go to bed thinking about you. If you want an integrator to build their business around your platform, you have to build your channel around them.
Integrators do not have to wait for the offer to arrive. I’d start now and set the terms yourself. Tell the platforms you work with what you need before you commit your business to them, and treat their answer as information. Then build.
In the end, like I noted earlier, I do not think single-source replaces the multi-line integrator. The high-security market will keep working the way it always has, and it should and will at 5-12% growth. But the mainstream market and its much higher growth rates and long-term value are not the high-security market, and it is where the opportunity for today and tomorrow is. The integrators who win it will look more like enterprise software partners than like the security contractors of the last 30 years.
If you are going to go down this path, choose the partner with the same care you would use to choose an acquisition target or a mate. Look at platform breadth, financial strength, and how seriously they treat their channel. Then commit fully, because half-committing to a single source gives you all of the risk and none of the benefit.
Fully commit and go be the channel we need for the next 30 years. Not the only channel we’ve had.
No better time than now.
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