For years, the org chart told the story clearly enough. IT managed the network. Physical security managed the cameras, the access control, and the emergency notification systems. And for the most part, they stayed in their lanes. But today, IT security convergence has become a reality.
On the show floor at ISC West 2026 in Las Vegas, we sat down with the team from Singlewire Software, a platform that has quietly become the connective tissue between AV, IT, and physical security in some of the most demanding enterprise environments in the country. What they described wasn’t just a product update. It was a fundamental shift in who is sitting at the decision-making table — and why that change is long overdue.
The Network Doesn’t Care About Your Org Chart
Here’s the hard truth no one wants to say out loud in a budget meeting: the network has eaten everything.
Thirty years ago, telephony ran on copper. Physical security ran on low-voltage wire. AV ran on its own proprietary infrastructure. Each world had its own experts, its own budgets, and its own problems to solve. Today? All of it lives on the IP network. And that changes everything.
“AV and the integrators lived on low-voltage copper wire,” the Singlewire team explained to us at ISC West. “Now you are seeing a lot of those new devices are networked, and all this stuff is coalescing around the network.”
For IT Managers and Facilities Directors, this convergence is both a gift and a burden. A gift because centralized management becomes possible. A burden because the blast radius of a network problem has grown exponentially. When the network hiccups, it’s no longer just email that goes down. It’s your mass notification system. Your emergency strobes. The digital signage in the hallway that’s supposed to tell a school full of students where not to go.
That is not a theoretical risk. That is Tuesday.
Ask Your IT Team This Question
“Is our emergency notification system dependent on a single path to deliver an alert?” If the answer is yes, you have a gap. Modern life safety platforms like Singlewire are built around a layered, multi-path architecture: wired panic buttons, mobile devices, wearable badges, desktop pop-ups, digital signage, and Microsoft Teams notifications all working in concert. No single point of failure. That’s the standard you should be holding your vendors to.
Why Security Teams Are Demanding a Seat at the IT Table — Right Now
This is the shift Singlewire is watching play out in real time across their customer base. And it’s one that every IT Manager and Workplace Experience Lead should understand, because it’s coming to your organization whether you’re ready for it or not.
Historically, Singlewire’s primary buyer was IT. The platform is software-driven, network-dependent, and deeply integrated with enterprise infrastructure. IT got it, bought it, and deployed it.
But something changed.
“As more and more of safety and security has moved to the network,” Singlewire told us, “you are seeing more and more safety and security people that are like, ‘Hey, I need to be involved in these decisions. I can’t just leave it to my IT team.'”
Think about what that means in practice for a school district, a university campus, or a multi-building healthcare system. The Safety Director has mission-critical requirements that a pure IT lens simply doesn’t prioritize. Response time. Redundancy. The ability to reach a custodian with no smartphone on a loading dock when a tornado warning drops. These are not edge cases. These are the whole point.
The good news? This friction is producing better outcomes. When IT and Security are both at the table, you stop optimizing for just one set of requirements. You start building something that actually works for the humans inside the building.
The “Fire Alarm on Your Phone” Test And Why K–12 Gets It
Here’s a quick gut-check you can use with any vendor pitching you a mass notification or emergency communication solution.
Singlewire uses it themselves: “Do you get fire alarms on your phone?”
You don’t. Because life safety is not a mobile-first problem. Mobile is one channel. It is not the channel.
This distinction matters enormously in K–12 and higher education environments, Singlewire’s top two markets, where the population density is high, the devices in use are wildly inconsistent, and the environments are anything but quiet. A high school cafeteria during lunch. A university lecture hall. A gymnasium. These are spaces where a push notification to a student’s phone is not a safety plan.
What works? A layered approach that can reach every person, on every device, through every available channel simultaneously. Audio alerts that cut through noise. Strobe lights that work when audio can’t. Digital signage that overrides whatever’s on screen. The equivalent of audio “ducking” that AV professionals will immediately recognize. And pushes the critical message to every display in the building.
The team at Singlewire shared a vivid example: a cabinet factory (one of their manufacturing customers) running machines 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sound-based alerts are essentially useless. So they push emergency messages to 60-inch display boards visible from anywhere on the floor. Same principle applies to a noisy high school hallway or a university fieldhouse.
The lesson for Facilities Directors in education: your emergency communication strategy needs to be environment-aware, not just device-aware.
The VAR Triangle That Actually Protects You
When evaluating emergency notification platforms, the deployment model matters as much as the technology. Singlewire’s recommended approach is a three-way partnership: your trusted Value-Added Reseller (VAR) who knows your specific environment and infrastructure; Singlewire as the subject matter expert; and your internal team holding the requirements. The VAR translates your operational reality into a technical spec. Singlewire rides shotgun during installation to make sure it lands right. This isn’t upselling — it’s how complex, mission-critical systems get deployed without regret.
What This Means for Your Network and Your Security Posture
For IT Managers specifically, the convergence of AV and physical security onto the network creates a compliance and security surface area that didn’t exist five years ago. Every networked endpoint is a node that needs to be managed, patched, and accounted for.
Platforms like Singlewire, built with layered architecture from the ground up, are designed to minimize that exposure. But the larger point is strategic: if your emergency notification infrastructure lives on your network, then your IT and Security teams need a shared governance model for it. Not a handoff. Not a ticket. A shared model.
That conversation is already happening at the most forward-thinking enterprises. ISC West 2026 made clear: it’s no longer optional.
The Bottom Line for Enterprise Decision-Makers
The IT/Security convergence isn’t a trend to watch. It’s a restructuring of how organizations keep people safe. And it’s being driven by the network itself.
If you’re an IT Manager, start inviting your Safety Director into the technology evaluation process. If you’re a Facilities Director or Workplace Experience Lead, start asking your IT team hard questions about single points of failure in your life safety stack. And if you’re in K–12 or higher education, understand that your environment demands a multi-channel, multi-device approach that no single-path solution can deliver.
The stakes are too high for siloed thinking.
Tim Albright is the founder of AVNation and is the driving force behind the AVNation network. He carries the InfoComm CTS, a B.S. from Greenville College and is pursuing an M.S. in Mass Communications from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. When not steering the AVNation ship, Tim has spent his career designing systems for churches both large and small, Fortune 500 companies, and education facilities.
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
- Tim Albright
