Management platforms have found a home in many residential estates and are used for a variety of security functions. Unfortunately, due to costs, old technology or bad product decisions, some estates have multiple management platforms for different security functions, and some older technologies are not able to integrate into current, open-standards platforms. In a world where there are almost innumerable vendors offering different management platforms, with integration and expansion promises differing in all of them, as well as different costs, what should estates do to ensure they invest in a management platform that not only meets their needs today, but can do so well into the future, potentially also integrating non-security functions into the interface to assist with operational management as well as security?