Axis Communications has shared its expert insights into some of the principal influences that will guide decision making in the year ahead in its latest tech trends study.
Now in its tenth year, researchers highlight the underlying theme of IT’s increasing involvement in decisions related to security and safety technology.
1. Growing focus on ‘ecosystem-first’
Decisions define direction, and ecosystems drive decisions. Increasingly, as IT’s influence grows, there is a perspective shift to an “ecosystem-first” approach, where the first decision is defined by the solution ecosystem to which the customer wants to commit.
With today’s solutions including a greater variety of devices, sensors, and analytics than ever before, it’s vital to keep things seamless. That need stretches from integration to configuration, from management to scalability. Committing to a single ecosystem makes these things possible in ways that mixed platforms cannot. Selecting a platform that offers adequate breadth and depth in hardware and software, from both the principal vendor and a secondary tier of partners, is now the primary decision.
2. The ongoing evolution of hybrid architectures
Hybrid remains a mix of edge computing within cameras, cloud resources, and on-premise servers, but with the growth of new use cases and capabilities, the balance of resources is changing. Edge and cloud are becoming much more significant.
More powerful edge AI-enabled surveillance cameras are coming into their own: their image quality is improved, accuracy of analytics has grown, and they can run many previously server-based tasks. Cloud-based resources, too, have grown in their ability to turn camera data into business intelligence and insights. On-prem is still dominant, but this trend meets both the IT department’s drive for efficiency, the security team’s desire for solution quality and effectiveness, and the data integrity and security needs of both.
3. The increased importance of edge computing
Enhanced capabilities mark the beginning of a new era of edge, but under a hybrid structure, where on-prem servers still support some tasks, the full potential of edge AI hasn’t always been fully realised. Now, the arguments against moving more to the edge have greatly diminished in part due to the availability of enhanced AI.
The discussion around where AI is best deployed has brought focus to the growing capabilities of cameras and the increasing variety of edge AI-enabled sensors. Edge processing data has become the basis for advanced features like smart video searching, and system power has allowed strong cybersecurity to become the default, including dealing with functions like secure boot and signed OS.
4. Mobile surveillance on the rise
Mobile surveillance has already seen significant growth, and is set to grow further over the next year. Improved connectivity, remote access and edge AI have helped unlock the use of more advanced, higher-quality surveillance cameras in mobile solutions. This makes cameras an attractive option in a greater variety of situations, from public safety to construction sites to festivals and sporting events.
Power management within surveillance cameras has also advanced, resulting in lower power utilisation without a compromise in quality, perfect for battery or renewable-powered solutions. Mobile surveillance solutions also prove more straightforward to approve than permanent installations. Ultimately, these factors mean that security and safety now reach further, to locations where it would be difficult to place physical security personnel.
5. Focused technology autonomy
Companies across many sectors have been looking to gain more control over key technologies essential to their products. The problem is, extending an organisation’s focus from its traditional business to a fundamentally different and potentially highly complex area like designing semiconductors is easier said than done.
It is becoming clear that technological autonomy makes a fundamental difference to the offering, and everything else should be led by global partnership. Designing its own system-on-chip (SoC), ARTPEC, which Axis started doing more than 25 years ago, has given it the ultimate control over product functionality.
With a fast-moving technological landscape, Axis research supports the development of innovations that meet the evolving needs of customers, and opportunities to improve safety, security, operational efficiency and business intelligence. Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation, however; it occurs through collaboration, listening to customers and by maintaining close relationships with partners as we collectively navigate challenges and drive progress into 2026 and beyond.
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