Photo courtesy of Peter Giacalone
Security industry observers look to Peter Giacalone for insight. Giacalone Associates president and Monitoring Matters columnist shared his assessment of 2025 and outlined what he expects in 2026. His overview points to fast technology adoption, active mergers and acquisitions, and the expanding use of AI in central station monitoring and related services.
Peter Giacalone said, “2025 was a robust year on many accounts. Technology adoption appears to come in a more expedient manner than in previous periods. M&A remains strong with continued beefy valuations.”
He added, “With the great misunderstandings and overwhelming overuse of the term “artificial intelligence”, I am pleased to see the mindful adoption of AI in a variety of applications. I am especially motivated to continue to experience how central station monitoring companies are adopting a variety of AI initiatives, including conversational AI.”
He also pointed out, “With UL827A baked into UL827 as a UUFO designation, I am pleased to see many legacy full-service companies that have provide their own in-house monitoring for decades partner with a UUFO center for hosting, redundancy and impactful features and services.”
He emphasized, “Without a doubt, AI applications. Very specifically, conversational AI is proving every day that it is a great path to complement staff for improved service levels in a very effective and efficient manner.”
He noted, “Through a variety of newly adopted technologies that are transforming legacy features, policies and procedures, organization are really stepping up their value propositions and levels of service.”
He observed, “Because some say that service levels of the many roll ups that are causing some super regionals and national integrators to grow exponentially will fall, I see that as these larger enterprise companies have started to leverage great technologies as AI and they have modified tasks, some of the companies are becoming more effective with happier clients.”
He concluded, “… continued great acceleration of the adoption of AI toward changing the complexion of their businesses to create raging fans of the company.”
