In this featured piece by AVNation, the outlet sits down with the Singlewire Software team at ISC West 2026 to discuss how IT, physical security, and AV are converging onto a single network — and what that means for how organizations keep people safe. The conversation centers on InformaCast, Singlewire’s critical communication and incident management platform, as the connective tissue linking these once-separate systems, and on why emergency notification should never depend on a single delivery path. It’s a practical look at layered, multi-channel alerting and the growing case for IT and security teams to make these decisions together.
Key Takeaways
- IT, physical security, and AV are converging on the IP network: mass notification, emergency strobes, and digital signage now share the same infrastructure, making centralized management possible but raising the stakes when the network has a problem.
- The question to ask any vendor: does your emergency notification system depend on a single path to deliver an alert? A layered, multi-path setup — wired panic buttons, mobile devices, wearable badges, desktop alerts, digital signage, and Microsoft Teams — removes single points of failure.
- Emergency alerting isn’t a mobile-first problem: you don’t get fire alarms on your phone, and a push notification to a student’s phone isn’t a safety plan in a loud cafeteria, gym, or lecture hall.
- Effective alerts are environment-aware, not just device-aware: audio that cuts through noise, strobes for loud and quiet spaces, and signage that overrides screens all matter — one manufacturer running machines around the clock pushes emergency messages to large display boards visible across the floor.
- Deployment works best as a three-way partnership: a reseller partner who knows your environment, Singlewire as the subject-matter expert, and your internal team holding the requirements, with IT and security sharing governance rather than handing it off.
Original Story
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, the makers of InformaCast 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.