Data centres on the other side of the world are buying the same memory and hard drives that go inside a recorder. And it’s pushing up security camera prices. Plus: a court draws the line on estate app access, 300 million SIMs a year, and Ford's R480,000 electric bakkie.

Every quote you write now that includes a camera comes with a new risk: prices are under pressure upstream, and lead times may get longer.

Why? Well, the self-same AI data centre demand that's been pressuring tech prices everywhere (we wrote a short on it affecting PC-based DVRs just three weeks ago) is now seriously impacting supply of the components going into NVRs and high-capacity storage at manufacturers.

According to research house Novaira, lead times for vital components at security sector manufacturers overseas have stretched from 4-6 weeks to 12 to 52 weeks (and Omdia said basically the same thing). So now video surveillance analysts are forecasting a shortage and price pressures through 2027.

AI data centres run on DRAM, NAND flash and high-capacity enterprise hard drives, the same things that go into cameras, recorders, recording storage and AI appliances. And AI hyperscale buyers are ordering up all the same drives that go into an NVR, in volumes no security distributor can match.

The thing is that they are not shopping on price; investors keep chucking money at them to buy. Now, manufacturers need to start managing supply, so you could see prices go up sharply soon.

But the bigger worry for us here in SA is allocation: It's much easier for a manufacturer in China to sell large orders to one cash-flush AI company than it is to sell to a bunch of smaller security distributors going into Africa.

And one thing you don't want is to sit with a signed order, money in your account, and you still can't get the recorder you need to finish a job you quoted.

1. Change the questions you ask your distributor: First: is this line item stock or indent, and if it's indent, what is the lead time in writing? Allocation means an order can be accepted and then not filled. Second: confirm what is actually in the box. Novaira warns of specification trade-offs as component costs peak, so check the storage and channel count on devices you order.

2. Sell what's already on the wall: If a client already has cameras (old or not), ask if you couldn't just optimise the existing ones better if the new ones are 3 months delayed. This is something that Olarm is well geared to help you do; check out this week's Sell Better business section a little lower down.

A Gauteng estate switched off a resident's MyEstateLife access during an arrears dispute. His own facial recognition still worked, but he could no longer issue codes for his children's school transport. The High Court dismissed his spoliation claim with costs, holding that visitor-code functionality is an administrative facility rather than part of possessing the home.

Signal: The judge said outright that disabling the resident's own credentials would have been a different case. That line runs through every estate you service.

MTN's South African CEO said on 25 August that MTN alone pushes 90 million prepaid SIMs a year, with the industry at 200 to 300 million. He tied the poor registration quality straight to the account-hijacking syndicates operating here. MTN has capped registrations at 10 SIMs each and now forces re-registration on any SIM left dormant 30 days after registration.

Signal: If you hold pool SIMs for communicators, that dormancy rule is your problem. Check what is sitting in the stockroom unregistered, or registered to somebody who has left.

Announced overseas on 25 August, a linked guardian gets a push notification when the feed is available, and the driver may be prompted to mount their phone so the back seat is in frame. Both the teen and the driver are told when somebody starts watching; the feed ends when the trip does, and nobody can retrieve a recording afterwards.

Signal: Watch this one. If it works overseas, it might land here, and it sets the expectation that visual verification of a person in transit is a normal consumer feature rather than a premium service you quote for.

Luffu Link, launched 25 August by Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman, is a screenless LTE band at $250 on pre-order, shipping early 2027. A button press sends a voice message with location, heart rate and battery level to trusted contacts, and the LTE data is included so there is no separate carrier plan.

Signal: This is a panic pendant that routes to a daughter in Durban instead of a control room. Ask who your clients think should answer, because somebody is about to sell them the other answer.

An actively exploited flaw in the remote-access SSL VPN on Cisco ASA and FTD devices lets unauthenticated attackers restart the device. A patch exists, and there is no workaround, which means somebody has to schedule the update rather than wait for a convenient window.

Signal: Ask who supplies your control room's remote access and when it was last patched. If the answer is a person's name rather than a schedule, that is your finding.

Today, we told you why a camera quote might become harder to write this quarter. Here is the other side: A client who cannot get a new system before Christmas can still get eyes on the cameras already on the wall with Olarm MAX, and that is a smaller job you can actually deliver.

Three things worth knowing before the next quote:

The free Olarm MAX Course runs 35 lessons across 90 minutes, covering installation, app setup and troubleshooting.

Ford recently announced the Fathom, a midsize electric pickup at $29,945 (about R480,000). Preorders open in early 2027 for, we assume, the US and Europe. There’s now word on when or if it comes to South Africa.

But we do know that it requires a whole different kind of factory setup, so it’s not something our Pretoria plant, which is currently supplying the 200k vehicles a year, including your Ford Rangers and their hybrids, will be able to produce.

Signal: Silverton got the hybrid because a hybrid fits an existing line. A pure EV at this price needed the line torn up and rebuilt. Worth watching which way the export orders move, because that is South African manufacturing on the other end of it.

Plenty on from tomorrow, which is convenient:

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