Announcement From An Endangered Species – An Independent PSIM Vendor

Mitch Vine gives his take (registration required) on the future of independent PSIM vendors.

IPVideo Corporation, of Bay Shore, NY, an independent PSIM solutions maker is a long time veteran in the PSIM business. With 15+ years of experience in the game, they have a lot of experience to offer. Like many PSIM companies their initial products have been heavily influenced by the needs of a small number of large clients. In their case a large project for Con Edison was big influencer.

IPVideo announced a C3 Fusion^TM PSIM, a new release of their product that tracks alerts and alarms, helps plan new procedures, gives operators a work list for a specific alert situation, tracks open tasks, and generally provides tools to help deal with a busy operations centre. After a situation has been resolved, C3 fusion keeps the data in a database for later review or forensic analysis.

Their product can be used to supplement a 3rd party VMS, or used with IPVideo’s own VMS.

Although software functionality is the center of the IPVideo’s announcement, we believe that the real story is in the integration expertise that the company brings to a large end user. Any Fortune 500 company integrating video, access control, intrusion etc. across many large properties is going to need some serious customization/integration work. They will have a ton of legacy issues that will defy any simple off-the-shelf approach.

The functionality in the software demo is only a starting point for a large project. Focused vendors like IPVideo will do anything to make a large client happy. We suspect that the flexibility of their approach, and the motivation and ability of their staff to accommodate the wishes of a large client is worth at least as much as the base functionality.

In spite of the title of this article – we think that independent PSIM vendors will continue to play an important role. Even though we view them as software vendors, their role as system integrators is critical. We expect to see more of these service oriented vendors emerge.

UPDATE:  John Honovich  tweets: any vendor who sells VMS and PSIM is not independent, ipvideocorp is no more independent than verint/rontal.

I think John missed the point here.  IPVideo Corporations  independence creds are based on the companies private ownership and open business model, not the fact the they do or don’t have their own VMS.

PSIM Buzz at ISC West 2011

The buzz at the ISC West trade-show this year was (PSIM) physical security information management. PSIM stole the spotlight at the event with IPVideo Corporation officially launching it’s PSIM offering, C3 Fusion, ADT acquiring Proximex, and then Verint announcing that it had acquired Rontal’s PSIM solution.

This article inSecurityInfoWatch.com discusses how PSIM will affect integrators and vendors.  There is no doubt that PSIM affords a lucrative opportunity for  savvy integrators who build a name as experts in this emerging market.

Working with your IT Department

Some guidelines from Mark S. Wilson, vice president of marketing, Infinova on how to successfully work with your IT department during the planning and deployment of a network based security system

Everyone involved with surveillance systems will be working with the IT department more and more. For instance, over 75 percent of integrators report that they are spending more and more time with IT this year versus last year. In fact, 29 percent say they are spending significantly more time. If integrators are spending more time with IT, you can only imagine the impact IT has had on end-users. Why do we bring this up?

The ability to use network infrastructure is one of the major advantages of an IP-based surveillance system. Corporate networks typically provide adequate bandwidth and switching and routing versus coaxial cable. However, don’t simply assume that running bandwidth intensive surveillance data over the IT network will be no problem.And, remember, especially if you are using high-resolution cameras, a lack of bandwidth will provide unsatisfactory images for the security department.

Here is the real problem: IT management doesn’t always understand the actual impact of video on their network. Their most important concern is that video will overburden the network and, as a result, they panic.

Check out the full article here.