Courtesy of IP Video: Tough Love for Open-Platform VMS

Full Speed Ahead
For the four phases of a product life cycle — introduction, growth, maturation and decline — most VMS providers agree that VMS is still in the growth phase. Open-platform VMS will continue to ride the IP wave as the security industry transforms itself from an analog platform to a digital one. “As the world moves from fully analog to fully digital, the market is expanding both through new deployments and retrofits,” Barnette said. “This creates opportunities at each tier and in almost every niche, as a wide range of customers have different needs, and chose to satisfy those needs in a variety of ways.”

The number and complexity of components that can be added to a video surveillance system will increase, which results in structural changes to the VMS itself. “As cameras become computers with lenses, you can have more applications, which creates more demand and functionality in the central VMS software that manages that data,” Holtenhoff said. “The point being, there's a whole video surveillance base that has tons of room to grow. As those applications change and evolve, so will be the need to better administer that.”

Eduardo Carlos Bonilha, President, Digifort agrees. “Value-added modules are still being developed, and customers are always suggesting new operational and administrative facilities. We still have much to develop in the coming years.”

As VMS develops, customers will expect more than the basics, and will look to see how sophisticated and how usable different VMS are. Christian Bohn, VP of Product Management and Marketing, Milestone Systems, said, “The market is maturing, customers are moving their focus from purely looking at new technology to see how this technology is implemented, the ‘ease of use' of the solutions and how they interconnect and drive new innovations and benefits.”

To respond to added complexity, manufacturers need strong channels of communication.“As security and surveillance systems become more advanced and complex, functional collaboration at the manufacturer's level becomes even more instrumental,” Malia said. One way may be to streamline the integration/ compatibility testing procedures, Malia suggests.

Communication will help strengthen the industry's ability to deal with further problems encountered by IP network surveillance, for example, vulnerability to cyber attacks. “The fact that IP video is not bound to a closed network nor is it self-contained brings privacy and security issues to the table,” Lachance said. “Video can easily be shared among multiple people and/or organizations and can be accessed from most parts of the world, making security and privacy a concern.”

Eventually the chaos will die down as more complete standards come to market. “As the various standardization efforts either take hold or die off — as some inevitably will — the customer will be presented with a smaller set of more rational and structured options,” Barnette said. Open-platform VMS is on the way up. To face the challenges ahead, vendors need to offer not just open software, but open lines of communication.