The “bright blue” web-based access control system from Schlage was introduced at the ISC West Conference in Las Vegas in April of this year.  It was designed for smaller facilities with small facility managers in mind.  One of those managers is Ken Brown of Tri-City Mechanical in Chandler, Arizona.  Since installation four months ago, Brown is crediting bright blue with a reduction in false alarms.

          Tri-City Mechanical runs out of a 77,000 square foot building and has 512 employees.  The company uses the Schlage bright blue software and wireless access control locking system.  "We had an incident, people weren't locking the doors, and we were having numerous false alarm calls," Brown said.  "We only needed access control on six doors so we did not want a complex system or one that would be costly to install."

          Bright blue manufacturers say that with their system managers can log on from anywhere there is internet access, whether that is from home or overseas.  They say there is no need to install expensive software or use a dedicated PC.  Everything you need is inside the blue box, just plug it into your existing network and power source to begin managing up to 32 devices and 5000 card holders.

          With bright blue, authorized Tri-City Mechanical users remotely access, monitor, and manage the company's access control system.  Brown says the cost of the bright blue system was less than that of a single panel on a larger security management system.  In addition, bright blue's plug-and-play design made configuration easy.  "Our six main doors on the first and second floors are connected to bright blue," says Brown.  "We simply attached the bright blue controller to the network and a power source and it was ready to go.  The system has all the features we need and is so user-friendly that it only took me 15 minutes to learn to use it."

          Schlage provides residential and commercial security products and its parent company is Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies.