Richard McClellan, Vice President of Sales at Advancis Software and Services, tells ISJ how the company’s open and vendor-neutral approach is transforming security and operations.
You’ve been active in guiding Advancis’ growth in the UK and globally – what are your core focuses as you look ahead to 2026 and beyond?
As we look towards the rest of 2026 and beyond, our focus is on scaling the impact of Advancis’ open software platforms globally while remaining very close to the operational challenges our partners and customers face.
One of the major priorities for us is expanding our presence in the US and our growth regions, where we are seeing increasing demand for integrated security and operational platforms across sectors such as data centres and other critical infrastructure as well as enterprise environments.
These organisations are operating at massive scale and require solutions that unify security, building management and operational processes without creating additional complexity.
At the same time, we continue to strengthen our ecosystem around our core platforms – WinGuard, AIM and the Advancis Open Platform (AOP).
Together, these allow organisations to move beyond siloed systems and towards a more holistic operational platform that supports security, identity management, automation and compliance.
What drives your focus on open, vendor-neutral integration?
The reality for most organisations today is that their environments are inherently multi-vendor.
Security, building management, IT infrastructure and operational technologies are typically deployed over many years, often across multiple sites and regions. Attempting to replace everything with a single vendor ecosystem is rarely practical or desirable.
This is why Advancis has always focused on open and vendor-neutral integration.
For many years, the industry has talked about integration. Platforms like WinGuard have successfully unified thousands of systems across security, safety and building technologies.
But organisations now need more than integration. They need the ability to extend, adapt and innovate on top of that integration layer. This is where the Advancis Open Platform (AOP) becomes transformational.
AOP enables organisations and technology partners to develop their own operational applications within a secure, unified platform environment.
In what ways does Advancis’ approach challenge traditional concepts of security in enterprise environments?
Traditionally, security systems have been viewed as standalone technologies focused purely on protection – for example, access control, CCTV, alarms and monitoring.
But in reality, security events rarely exist in isolation. They are closely connected to operational processes, facilities management, identity management and IT infrastructure.
Our approach challenges the traditional model by positioning security as part of a broader operational ecosystem.
For example, in sectors such as data centres, we see organisations managing thousands of operational alarms every month across BMS platforms, environmental sensors, IT systems and physical security infrastructure.
If these systems remain disconnected, response processes become fragmented and operational risk increases.
By integrating these environments through open platforms like WinGuard, organisations can unify the entire alarm lifecycle, from ingestion and workflow automation through to acknowledgement and audit.
Security then becomes not just a protective layer, but a central operational intelligence platform that improves resilience, response and decision-making.
How do you ensure your technology evolves in a way that anticipates future challenges?
A key part of anticipating future challenges is designing platforms that are inherently adaptable. Technology, threat landscapes and operational requirements evolve very quickly, so flexibility and openness are essential.
That is why at Advancis we have invested heavily in modular architecture, open APIs and scalable platforms that can integrate with both existing and emerging technologies.
Our development of AOP reflects this philosophy. It allows organisations and partners to extend the capabilities of the platform, developed their own system integrations and build new operational applications as requirements evolve.
At the same time, we work closely with our partners and customers across sectors such as critical infrastructure, transport and manufacturing. These environments often face the most demanding operational requirements, and that feedback plays a critical role in shaping the direction of our technology.
How do you envision the future of integrated security and building management? Where do you see Advancis’ role in that future?
We are seeing a clear convergence between security systems, building management systems and operational technology.
In sectors like data centres, logistics and large enterprise campuses, the distinction between security operations and facilities operations is becoming increasingly blurred. Events such as environmental alerts, infrastructure failures or access incidents all require coordinated responses across multiple systems.
The future therefore lies in unified operational solutions that can orchestrate these environments intelligently.
Advancis is well positioned to play a key role in this shift. Platforms such as WinGuard already integrate hundreds of different systems and millions of devices, allowing organisations to centralise monitoring, automate workflows and provide guided response processes.
As infrastructure becomes more distributed and complex, this kind of unified operational layer will become essential for maintaining resilience and operational continuity.
When engaging with customers in highly regulated sectors, how do you position your solutions to support compliance and operational continuity – not just security?
Highly regulated sectors such as finance, energy and data centres operate under significant pressure to demonstrate both compliance and operational resilience.
In these environments, security platforms need to support far more than monitoring. They must provide structured workflows, full auditability and clear operational accountability.
Our platforms support this by providing automated incident handling, guided response procedures and complete audit trails across all integrated systems.
This ensures that organisations can demonstrate how events were handled, how decisions were made and how operational procedures were followed.
PIAM solutions such as AIM also support governance around identities and access rights, which is increasingly important in regulated environments where physical and logical access controls must be tightly managed.
By combining security integration, operational workflows and compliance reporting, we help organisations maintain both security and operational continuity.
Finally, you are exhibiting at The Security Event once again this year – why is the event so strategically important?
The Security Event has become Advancis’ most prominent security industry gathering in the UK. It provides a valuable opportunity to engage directly with security leaders, integrators and technology partners who are facing many of the same challenges.
For Advancis, the event is particularly important because our technology sits at the intersection of many different domains; security, building management, infrastructure and operations.
The Security Event brings together stakeholders from all of these areas, allowing us to demonstrate how our platforms can unify those environments.
It is also an opportunity to showcase the latest developments across our portfolio, and how our solutions are helping organisations modernise their operational security strategies.
