AiThority Interview with Steve Womer, SVP of Engineering at Interface Systems

Steve Womer, SVP of Engineering at Interface Systems, highlights the transformative impact of cloud-based technologies and the evolving role of AI in the Q&A:

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Hi Steve, given your extensive background in engineering and operational roles, please share your journey so far.

My career in technology started with an internship at a company called Educate Online, providing technical support to at-home learners using their home computers and BYO dial-up Internet. That opportunity translated to a full-time role, and it was an extremely formative time. I had some great mentors and learned about technology, customer service, problem-solving, persuasion, leadership, and having fun at work. The company experienced explosive growth through pursuing a new publicly funded vertical and I learned the importance of striking the balance between short-term scrappy solutions and fixing problems in a long-term, sustainable way. I had an opportunity to join a startup environment in a network sales engineering role, and I jumped at the opportunity to learn something new with a company called Industry Retail Group. I had a great mentor show me the ropes of sales engineering and had many late-night “sink or swim” moments trying to figure out command line syntax on ScreenOS, JunOS, etc. At the time, we were designing and deploying network infrastructure for many retail brands. Walking through a mall was always a proud moment in that era, as I pointed out to any willing listener all the customers I helped sell, deploy, and support. Over my 7-year stay, we grew from $10M in ARR to $50M in ARR, so it was yet another fantastic opportunity to learn how to scale up an operation to withstand growth. I then joined a startup to build out their sales engineering and SD-WAN strategy. Their approach was really different in that they were truly agnostic on what hardware platform they supported, so it sent me on a mission to learn a lot about a wide variety of platforms. It was a fun ride, and after a brief stint in entrepreneurship (bad timing… 2020), I joined Interface with a focus on building out the sales engineering practice. It has been a fun pivot as it created the opportunity to learn more about video, alarm, and virtual guard technologies. It really resonates with my love of people as we truly have a positive impact on people’s lives. Seeing the current state of AI and video analytics is a really fun time to be in the industry as there is a litany of use cases for the technology both from a life safety and an operational perspective.

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Managing network infrastructure across multiple locations presents unique challenges. How do Interface Systems address these challenges, particularly in maintaining high uptime and security?

Interface addresses uptime and security through the way we design and implement solutions for our customers. We address this at both an operational and physical layer.

At the physical layer, consistency is key. Whether installing in a greenfield location or taking over the network at an existing location, we install a cabinet and standardize all of the LAN drops to a template configuration on the switch. Standardizing cable placement, device placement, and color coding cables ensures our support team can follow the same steps when troubleshooting a problem at a site because the physical environment is based on a standard specification for the customer. The cabinet is also locked, so only people with access can unplug devices or move cables.

At the logical layer, we configure systems with redundant connections (typically one wireline and one cellular so a downed line or cable cut doesn’t sever connectivity). We also deploy IP power devices so we can automatically and/or remotely power cycle equipment when there is a communication failure. We see a large percentage of issues can be resolved without any contact with on-site personnel, accelerating service restoration and letting store managers focus on running their operations.

Interface is a PCI compliant service provider, and we design all of our customer environments with PCI in mind. It is an extra lift on the front end but building out a zero-trust cardholder data VLAN is worth the extra effort. Our team provides all the resources necessary to coordinate with our customers to ensure we have sources, designations, and protocols allowed on a “need to flow” basis vs. enabling web filtering and assuming all outbound traffic is valid.

Interface Systems leverages AI and cloud-based technologies extensively. How have these technologies transformed the services you provide to your clients, especially in security and business intelligence?

Cloud-based technologies have been transformative, and while AI hasn’t been what I’d call revolutionary yet, it will be. Let me start with cloud-based technologies. Cloud technologies aren’t transformative in their underpinnings, just in the distribution model. Things like VMS have existed for quite some time, but there are drawbacks to the customer / service provider hosted model. There is infrastructure, upkeep, and maintenance of the platform, then there is connectivity to the centralized controller to contend with. In addition, these systems become proprietary in how they’re configured, and companies can find themselves single-threaded in supporting the infrastructure, creating risk in effectively supporting the environment for the long haul. Since video recorders may not exist in the existing VPN zone, getting buy-in from IT to allow the video control plane across the VPN can be challenging. Placing that infrastructure in the cloud on a secure multi-tenant platform eliminates the need to build and maintain the technology and the required overhead. We’ve implemented cloud-managed intrusion, access control, video, networking, and VoIP solutions, and the benefits to our customers include accelerated deployment, improved configuration management, and flexible consumption models.

I would say we’re just scratching the surface on AI in terms of its application in our industry. We’ve recently launched two products that include elements of AI, and there is a lot of buzz around them. The first employs person and vehicle detection cameras that are able to differentiate a human or vehicle from other objects like animals or refuse blowing through the field of view. Not long ago, motion sensing and human video analysis was the only way to validate those things. The use of AI achieves the promised benefits; accelerated decision-making (real-time in this case), reduced human effort (reduced cost of delivery), and refocusing of human efforts to things that can’t (yet) be accomplished by AI. The second is a video analytics platform that incorporates AI into the training and ongoing service. The solution is able to identify and alert when triggers are met (customer wait time exceeded X seconds, for example) and displays the data in dashboard views so customers can understand trends in both employee and customer behavior. As the solutions continue to evolve, we’ll be able to use AI to interact with customers and employees based on conditional triggers. Ultimately, things like deep learning and generative AI will be incorporated into solutions where instead of looking at dashboards and exporting data for analysis in tools like PowerBI, customers will be able to ask systems for outcomes, and AI will curate the dataset based on what information is needed to demonstrate the outcome.

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You are passionate about simplifying complex systems for clients. Can you share a specific incident of how your approach has significantly improved a client’s operational efficiency or ROI?

One of the recent success stories was aligning with a growing Car Wash for their technology and security strategy. We built a standard model for network, video, and alarm and became part of their new construction strategy. We’re closely integrated with their construction team and have helped ensure they’re able to open on time. Since this is a turn-key solution, it allows them to focus on their core competency vs. managing multiple vendors integrating different systems. It avoids costly delays in opening new sites.

Your integrated approach uses virtual security guards and interactive security operations centers. How has this model enhanced Interface Systems’ management of security and compliance?

Virtual guard takes video-verified alarms to the next level and allows two-way communication. Alarms are reactive by nature as they’re responding to an exception. Virtual guard allows users at a location to contact our security operations center on demand based on an event occurring and an anticipated event.

Looking ahead, what are the major trends you foresee in the managed services industry?

As with any industry, there is constant cost pressure. We’re close to hitting the floor in some industries as there is a minimum human effort and therefore cost to maintain systems and provide services. Outsourcing offshore has helped continue to push the cost model down, the next level is outsourcing to AI. There are a few areas where I see this coming into focus. It would be great to see a more outcome-driven approach to configuration at some point, it is just a matter of cost/benefit to the hardware and software manufacturers. Right now, there is little incentive for manufacturers to reduce the level of configuration effort until one starts doing it and becomes more highly favored. The dashboards and control planes have become easy to manage, the next logical step is to connect narrative-based needs to functional system configuration(s). Imagine needing to add or remove a user, and instead of logging in to an interface and executing the change, you can tell a digital assistant what you want to do, incorporate some type of biometric authentication (voice, face, etc.), and the change is complete. That is where AI starts to deliver on the promise of removing remedial tasks from our day to day.

On the human interaction side, things get a little more complex. When dealing with operational compliance, I foresee video analytics being combined with AI assistants where operational procedures can be audited and corrective suggestions can be offered in real-time. For example, a user mops the floor and forgets a wet floor sign. A voice message, text alert, Teams alert, or other type of notification reports the exception and reminds the personnel to place the appropriate signage. Life safety is where things get a little more tricky. Judgment calls relative to human safety cannot be entrusted to AI yet. While I’m confident we’ll get there, I wouldn’t want an AI system dealing with a hostage situation.

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