Integrators '20 under 40' 2016—Bryan Payne

Bryan Payne, 34

Director of operations, Convergint

Austin, Texas

Bryan Payne says some of his earliest memories as a child are of him helping his father with his security business. “My father worked in the fire alarm and building automation side, and is a master electrician and owned some security companies when I was growing up,” he explained. “In 2002, we started to do some contract work for Convergint, which was just getting started up, and that is when I first got into the security industry.”

Today, Payne's role at Convegint is to support and provide oversight for the company's four CTCs or Convergint Technology Centers in San Antonio, Austin, Houston and New Orleans, which “entails both the project and service delivery, the financial support for those four locations, from a planning, forecasting and budgeting perspective,” he said.

On the technology side, Payne said he is really excited about the merger of the physical security side with the IT security space. “At Convergint we coined that as Quad4, which is where the two spaces meet, and you have seen an evolution going from the customer side of security falling under facilities and maintenance to now going primarily under IT, so it is opening more doors into the cybersecurity,” said Payne, who noted that Convergint is now starting to get into cybersecurity through a partnership with Orbus, in an effort to provide solutions in that area for customers.

In terms of recruiting young, new talent, Convergint has a colleague development plan that focuses on recruiting people after college and pulling them into Convergint, as well as internships that provide a complete picture of the industry and its many facets. “We get them working in different aspects of the business, so bringing them in early and having a strategic vision for how you can integrate them into the business is key.”