The 2019 BICSI Fall Conference & Exhibition that recently took place in Las Vegas showcased the impact that digital transformation is having on organizations both large and small. Though the event dates coincided with the second anniversary of the mass shooting that shook Sin City in 2017, the fall conference itself stood as a proud statement of hope, particularly with regards to how solutions providers and city leaders are coming together to mitigate these types of attacks in the future.
Of course, there were plenty of next-generation security and communications technologies on display on the show floor that will play a role in the smart/safe cities of tomorrow. Here are few of the things that made headlines at this year’s event.
Meet Your ICT “Match”
What better way to start the conference than with the message of enhancing the telecommunications industry with leading education, promoting skill sharing, and assessing knowledge with professional credentialing programs. With the launch of the new BICSI Career center, ICT (information and communications technology) talent connects with opportunity. We learned how employers now can target a specialized pool of ICT applicants and jobseekers receive postings that are searchable by requested experience and credential.
New BICSI CEO
It’s no accident that the BICSI Board of Directors selected John H. Daniels of HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) as the association’s incoming executive director and CEO. As a global vice president in the analytics department and a former CIO, he brings a focus aligned with BICSI’s embrace of digital transformation through ICT advancement.
“BICSI is advancing the ICT community by helping thousands of ICT professionals and companies around the world deliver the highest quality products and services in virtually every industry, and I couldn’t be more honored to be chosen as its next CEO,” Daniels said. “In collaboration with the board, staff, members and other stakeholders, we must seize the tremendous opportunities ahead to focus on bringing a positive, meaningful impact to global digital transformation. I look forward to serving the BICSI family and helping to enable its leaders and members to achieve their full potential on this exciting journey.”
A New President-Elect
The conference also saw the election of BICSI’s first female president, Carol Oliver, who begins a two-year term next year. Oliver has been a friend to both the security and ICT industries, tirelessly contributing to BICSI, ASIS International and AV Association events.
“I am excited about the new direction and changes happening at BICSI for members, sponsors and the ICT industry. As we move forward, BICSI is expanding our reach and programs to include many diverse building applications that are tied together through a smart network infrastructure," said Oliver.
Standards
BICSI has released an education program to their popular Data Center Design Standard: “DC101: Introduction to Data Center Design” and “Data Center Flash Cards” online course and study material. Both the online course and study material are aligned to the latest industry standards and information found in BICSI’s ANSI/BICSI 002-2019 Data Center Design & Implementation Best Practices and the Essentials of Data Center Projects (EDCP), 1st edition publications. With the expansion of regional telecommunications infrastructure to support providers like AWS and Microsoft, today’s data center designers must have comprehensive knowledge of mechanical, electrical and telecommunications systems, as well as a familiarity with reliability, security and building requirements. BICSI’s data center curriculum and DCDC certification are a significant measure of qualification to design, implement and maintain sustainable, future-ready data centers.
“Unlike exercises where a student can get by simply doing as directed, the assignments reveal the real learning. The assignments were where I discovered whether I truly understood the material. This course produces real learning,” said Joe Neary, RCDD, a Site Superintendent in Johnson Creek, Wis.
Also, during pre-conference activities, BICSI Director of Standards Jeff Silveira, Oliver and about 40 volunteers held an Intelligent Buildings Committee meeting where a new standard is being developed.
Learning Academy
To keep pace with its own standards and continuing commitment to industry education, BICSI just completed Project Refresh which includes a new and improved BICSI Headquarters Learning Academy with four classrooms, provisions for face-to-face sessions and a classroom fit for both copper and optical fiber cabling classes.
The newly renovated BICSI headquarters is a model intelligent building complete with a distributed antenna system (DAS), upgraded PoE, IP video surveillance, optical fiber cabling, advanced sound masking and paging, 4K input/output design, wireless microphone and array microphone technology, any-to-any switching by room and PoE-based LED lighting. It represents a combined effort of BICSI-credentialed infrastructure designers, project managers, installation technicians, solution providers, all of which are members or staff.
Keynote: BICSI on the Journey to Smart Spaces
The conference kicked off with a session dedicated to smart cities, spaces and how artificial intelligence (AI) is fully in play in cybersecurity, lowering transportation costs, enhancing critical infrastructure protection and, above all, saving lives in active assailant scenarios.
During the keynote, Lisa Falzone of Athena Security introduced a new case study in New Zealand where security cameras that use AI to determine whether someone is armed are proving effective after early testing at Christchurch's Al Noor mosque. Al Noor was one of two mosques targeted during a terrorist attack on March 15 that led to the death of 51 Muslim worshippers. AI-powered surveillance is being used worldwide in public places where mass shootings have taken place, including Dayton, Ohio, Houston, El Paso and Odessa, Texas.
A trained AI algorithm using an IP camera’s video source can repeatably and reliably detect, for example, a dark weapon against a dark uniform or clothing; whereas the human eye would more likely overlook the weapon’s distinct characteristics.
The use of an international case study is of great importance to the BICSI membership as their Global Conference Program is now well established in ICT-rich regions like the Middle East, Singapore and Japan.
During the keynote we heard more perspectives on how to leverage AI in analyzing massive amounts of data to find the hidden behavior. Anson Wong, CISO of Los Angeles World Airports, added, “we have a Cyber Operations Center with many layers, some using AI-based technology for threat detection, analysis and behavior.”
Mark Jules, Global Vice President, Smart Spaces and Video Intelligence at Hitachi Vantara continued by illustrating why users buy AI-capable solutions. “It’s not unusual for one of our systems to have hundreds of different sensors. Our customers want to leverage their investment as many ways as possible. In smart spaces, we focus on three outcomes.”
These include:
- Public Safety: Bag left behind or license plate recognition (LPR) for known terrorists.
- Operations: Enhanced passenger experience in airports where you want to leave a plane as quickly as possible.
- Business: For a city street reducing traffic and emissions.
Jules also discussed the benefits of using object storage in today’s data center., “[With object-based storage] we don’t care where the data is stored. We can store, compute and run analytics anywhere in the smart spaces train. The gateways are closer to the edge and can run both predictive maintenance and predictive crime analysis.”
AV Moves to Center Stage
The BICSI Conference and Exhibits team including industry veterans Melissa Cumminsky and Kim Osterman continued to impress with the vendor exhibits where AV solutions and intelligent power sources took center stage.
Karl Rosenberg, of almost 20 years at Extron, immediately followed the “Smart Cities” keynote during the general session and talked about solutions like his that create “the glue of the AV industry” and make Smart Buildings affordable and scalable. “BICSI and AV have truly collided. Twisted pair [PoE cabling] and wireless infrastructure are a necessity for AV systems.” At the Extron exhibit, the PlenumVolt, a simplified yet scalable “Classroom AV in a box” hidden in the ceiling got significant attention. The lightweight rack on a 2’ x 2’ ceiling tile swings down to reveal switches, amplifier, power supply and pre-terminated CAT6SF UTP connections.
A walking tour? Collaboration spaces and meeting rooms got further simplified with Extron’s one touch panel, allowing instant room scheduling and access to Zoom, Cisco, Logitech or Microsoft Team equipment. Uncompressed video over twisted pair into switches is distributed to users with many different AV consuming devices like smartphones, tablets, watches, walls, LCD monitors: each having the best resolution for their requirements.
These smart spaces are all the rage in creative environments and even during critical tabletop exercises; press the “show me” button and collaborators’ screens appear simultaneously on the same display, simplifying info sharing for teachers, moderators and students.
Power Sourcing Equipment Gets Smart
Even the consumer electronics industry is accepting BICSI’s and IEEE’s nomenclature of Powered Devices (PD) and Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) using a single cable for low voltage power and bi-directional data.
Stephen Oliva, Altronix National Sales Director, spoke of the need for BICSI Design members to deliver systems that are innovative yet affordable; future-proof and inclusive of as much current and “pre-standard” technology possible. It is indeed rare to have a company so well known in Security and Safety Industries like Altronix make the commitment of Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) supporting 4 Pair PoE even before the IEEE 802.3bt Standard was formally ratified and in use. To the typical Security Designer this may not be apparent, but the education at BICSI Fall 2019 showed BICSI Designers holding the RCDD or DCDC credential a better way to meet the demands of many more Powered Devices (PDs) in a Smart Building or Space.
Long-time exhibitor Panduit introduced more SmartZone PDUs with features that go beyond power distribution, providing local and remote monitoring of aggregate power, environmental and physical access data. Even power consumption data on a per-outlet or per zone basis may be collected and analyzed.
Light into Money
In SecurityInfoWatch.com’s partner publication, Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine, Dr. Rick Pimpinella, Panduit’s Chief Engineer, summarized how market leaders like AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure and IBM keep pace. The BICSI Data Center Design Certification, Design Standard and new learning initiatives introduced at the Fall Conference are benefiting from these key market trends. Savvy security integrators will recognize these opportunities and more closely match their services to fulfilling these users.
- Edge Computing in the data center ecosystem means placing analysis and response processing close to the source allowing data superusers and digital transformation pockets to enjoy optimized response times.
- Hyperscale is data center investment made and efficiency gained by leveraging platforms from market leaders like AWS. The global hyperscale data center market size is on track to grow from $25B in 2017 to $81B by 2022.
- Solid State Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) reduces data bottlenecks in the Edge Computing and Hyperscale environments.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) relies on ingesting massive amounts of data for analysis and is driving growth of 25 and 100Gigabit Ethernet (GE) port shipments.
- Converged technology means scalability through software-defined solutions, creating agile organizations. This flexible architecture allows expansion, contraction and relocation where needed. Simply put, it makes your data center more attractive to a larger number of users seeking services.
It was no accident that I got to ride in an autonomous vehicle operated by Lyft during the fall conference in Las Vegas. The amount of data gathered by the different sensors in such a small space would prove difficult for the typical security systems integrator should they apply this to current use cases. The modified 5-series BMW was outfitted with four layers of sensors running AI algorithms, performing safety operations: IP video cameras to recognize traffic signals and lane markings, Lidar for object recognition of all vehicles, intersections, pedestrians and obstacles, radar for secondary object recognition and primary during inclement weather and acoustic sensors for vehicular spacing and recognition of emergency vehicles requiring traffic interdiction. For the BICSI DCDC, that amount of data from diverse sensors passing through a Data Center they’ve designed is just another normal day at the office.
About the Author:
Steve Surfaro is Chairman of the Public Safety Working Group for the Security Industry Association (SIA) and has more than 30 years of security industry experience. He is a subject matter expert in smart cities and buildings, cybersecurity, forensic video, data science, command center design and first responder technologies. Follow him on Twitter, @stevesurf.
