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.

It’s All About the Connectors

Sharon Watson writing at Security Squared outlines the criteria integrators and their clients use when picking a PSIM platform.

“The first thing we look for is what integrations already exist; that’s the big one,” said Steve Rogers, vice president, LANAIR Group, Los Angeles, Calif., which implemented a PSIM solution from Proximex at Port of Long Beach.

“Getting all those systems to plug in and relate events is a major, major piece of work,” said Greg Thornbury, vice president, SecureNet, a Carollton, Texas-based integrator researching PSIM solutions. His clients in oil/gas, petrochemical and finance sectors tend to have old versions of major systems as well as homegrown applications. His question for PSIM vendors is who they connect with and how.

“The value of the product is in the hooks,” said Ayal Vogel, vice president, sales and marketing for Safeguards Technology, Hackensack, N.J., which has worked with Mer Inc., Fair Lawn, N.J., to date. “The value increases by the number of connectors that are preexisting,” he said.

C3 Fusion uses it’s Unified System Connection Protocol (USCP™) to connect to security subsystems.  USCP is a unique bi-directional messaging system that allows for interface with fusion snap-on connector services completely outside of C3 Fusion’s core software. The connectors provide continuous network integrity testing, and buffering for lossless network fault recovery. Connector Development Kits (CDKs) make USCP available to third party developers.

A successful PSIM application must be able to support a variety of connections including legacy and industry specific custom subsystems to the latest in physical security devices.