Standards
ONVIF and PSIA are the dominant interoperability bodies, with PSIA being the first body formed during February 2008 in the U.S. PSIA is working on comprehensive standards for video surveillance, access control and intrusion, while ONVIF is more video-centric.
Today, ONVIF is the one with more members — 296 as of press time. “We have close to 800 products,” said Jonas Andersson, Chairman of ONVIF's Steering Committee and Director of Business Development and Global Sales at Axis Communications. “Consultants have started specifying the standard, which no one could imagine.” Each standard has its own merits. However, as most vendors specialize in video surveillance, they adopted the standard followed by network camera king Axis.
While both ONVIF and PSIA promise to address access control and intrusion, the first iteration of the standards covers getting video from third-party network cameras. Playback, compression and PTZ controls are not yet covered, as each company does things differently.
As end users mix and match cameras, interoperability standards relieve headaches. “Many customers have come to trust the quality and the performance of our products, and will be able to continue doing so as they use their VMS or NVR of choice,” said Steven Sung, Regional Sales Manager of CNB Technology. “We want to be an integral part of the process in making network cameras more available than ever.”
However, technical issues still need to be ironed out. “Real-time streaming protocol is not detailed enough in ONVIF, which is why some cameras display with better quality than others,” said Qiwei Zhang, Assistant Chief Engineer of SAE Electronic. “Equipment in the network is not detected if it goes offline, which is covered in the PSIA standard. We're leaning toward PSIA compliance, as it's a more complete standard.”
Each body has multiple levels of membership; fees are not charged for manufacturers conforming to the standard, while higher-level paying members are involved in writing the specifications. “ONVIF has achieved so much, and it's foolish to expect everything to be perfect from the start,” said Anders Ulle, Communications for Siemens Building Technologies.
“ONVIF doesn't test all devices; it's an honesty game.” The current version of ONVIF is incompatible with past versions, causing great developer consternation. “Future releases of the standard will be backward-compatible,” Andersson said. “We will just add to the standard, not modify it.”
However, each manufacturer will interpret the standard differently to maintain their competitive advantage, making true interoperability elusive. “I was the vice chair of PSIA and saw where the market was going,” said Danny Petkevich, VP of R&D for Next Level Security Systems. “Everyone was doing the same thing. Where the future is and where it is now is taking all the pieces, putting them together and making it easy for people.” Standards are in their infancy, but are a step in the right direction for a highly fragmented industry.
The American market has made an impressive rally in the past year, with fervent hopes that the worst of the downturn is over. Increased funding and healthy domestic demand are spurring an uptick for IP and solutions that deliver cost-saving results. US security is on the rebound, hoping to score big in 2011