For enterprise and government markets, networking companies are opting to converge and fine-tune access control applications

By Marisa Torrieri, Contributing Editor

Depending on your frame of reference, the term “access” conjures thoughts of very different applications. Traditional building security or access control professionals think of physical access. The IT community thinks of logical access to computers, networks, and systems. But it’s actually the convergence of logical and physical access that presents the biggest opportunities and challenges to both enterprises and industry.

Convergence has been ‘the’ buzzword in security for several years now but it is rapidly moving from the chalkboard to the implementation list for cross-sector organizations. According to Forrester Research, spending on merging physical and logical access control in both the public and private sectors will increase to more than $7 billion in 2008.