AS the surge towards open architecture continues, you have to think it’s going to be the ONVIF group that wll dominate and set standards for products and interfaces. Today the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) reports its membership now includes 14 full members, 18 contributing members and 169 user member companies, bringing the total to 201 companies. Additionally, 27 companies have launched a total of 195 ONVIF-conformant products, including network cameras and video management systems, according to forum organizers.This is a great result for ONVIF. The organisation was launched by Bosch, Axis Communications and Sony in 2008 and to get this far in a couple of years is very impressive indeed.“Reaching 200 members and 195 conformant products is another milestone for ONVIF and clearly shows that the industry has chosen ONVIF to be the interface to select,” Jonas Andersson, Axis Communications, chairman of ONVIF’s Steering Committee said recently.“ONVIF is now taking another step forward to facilitate the integration of IP-based security and safety devices using a global open network interface.”In April, the forum announced that it had expanded its scope to standardize communication between access control devices and ensure interoperability between network video products and access control systems. This too, is big news and it’s good for end users and integrators and installers.The current state of the market is a mass of proprietary standards blended with TCP/IP networking protocols with variations across all layers of hardware and software.
