According to Per Björkdahl, the Steering Committee Chair for ONVIF, which is a non-profit organization of nearly 500 members driving the development of open global standards for effective interoperability of IP-based physical security products, the world of technology and features are changing at a rapid pace and the mentality of “build once and maintain forever” is no longer practical nor an attractive option for any of the collaborators in large and complex projects.
“It severely limits an end user’s ability to try new technology and/or different vendor’s products and requires a substantial financial commitment to those specific manufacturers and proprietary interfaces. Another approach that some end users and integrators take is to deploy products from a single manufacturer in order to facilitate system-wide integration. However, this approach can also have an undesirable result: it stifles an end user’s ability to add new products from other vendors and locks an end user into a long-term commitment with the manufacturer,” says Björkdahl.
So he says this is where the need for robust and well-defined standards comes into play, particularly for video surveillance, which is most commonly at the heart of safe city deployments. Standards, such as those from ONVIF, an industry alliance that offers standardized interface specifications for video security systems and physical access control systems, provides the common link between disparate components of these systems. Designed specifically to overcome the challenges in multi-vendor environments, ONVIF’s common interface facilitates communication between technologies from different manufacturers and fosters an interoperable system environment where system components can be used interchangeably, as long as the devices conform to the ONVIF specification.
Since 2008, when ONVIF was founded, the organization has published a number of specifications and profiles for effective integration of devices and clients in the physical security industry. For Video Security systems, ONVIF has released Profile S for Video streaming and Profile G for storage and playback. Currently, Profile Q for easy deployment is in its release candidate state.
Jonathan Lewit, the new Communication Committee chairman for ONVIF and the Director of Technical Leadership and Advanced Technology & Engineering for Pelco, says Profile Q offers out-of-the-box functionality for systems integrators and end users with an easy set-up mechanism and basic device-level configuration, streamlining the setup and connection of systems and devices.
Profile Q also supports Transport Layer Security (TLS), a secure communication protocol that allows ONVIF devices themselves to communicate with clients across a network in a way that protects against tampering and eavesdropping. Profile Q has been in release candidate status in order to provide industry review and feedback prior to the final release.
“Profile Q went through its six-month trial period and now has been released. The main intent was to solve the problem of first-run connectivity, where Profile S was created to try and solve the standard feature when you connect a system together. Q is all about getting the initial systems up and running, along with some security considerations,” Lewit says.
He adds that for vendors this standardizes a lot of this first run communication issues so there is an efficiency gain, which is pretty common across all the profiles. For integrators there are also huge efficiencies that are related their install investments, allowing them to get their systems up and running faster and with more consistency as they use different manufacturers’ products. The end user should also see lower installation costs and more flexibility with their projects.
“The end goal has been to lower cost and ease of installation,” Lewit adds.
The use case working group is a process that ONVIF employs using several different working groups that focus on various different tasks. The use case working group is an initiative that helps better capture some of these user benefit stories so all the working committees can better communicate better internally and externally. “This allows us to communicate between the other working groups so we can align specific end user needs,” says Lewit.
“This eliminates all the various working groups from possibly duplicating efforts and working in a silo. Then at the same time, once these benefits are determined it allows us to better communicate them back out to the installers, manufacturers and users once they are in place hoping they will adopt the standards,” concludes Lewit. “I think the tide is turning and I attribute a lot of that to the ONVIF profiles. ONVIF has done a lot of work. We focused on the specification itself but then recognized very early on there were some variants you could as the specs were implemented. The profiles help set the expectations and create a baseline from which everyone can work from.”
About the Author:
Steve Lasky is the editorial director of SouthComm Security Media Group, which includes Security Technology Executive and Security Dealer & Integrator magazines, SecurityInfoWatch.com, the number security website in the world and the Secured Cities Conference (www.securedcities.com), which is coming up on November 13-15 in Houston. Lasky is a 30-year veteran of the security industry.
