What's really interesting about "convergence" is using video for marketing and operation purposes rather than security - IT integration. Today, I read a post from the CEO of Envysion that nicely made the point and voiced my own concerns with the concept of convergence.

Matt mentions the issue with convergence definitions being too security focused. I agree and think that it is simultaneously too IT focused. Convergence in the industry often degenerates into discussions of how IT is taking over, should take over, will take over, etc.

I don't find that type of convergence to be too significant because video still serves security goals. IT convergence may make video more efficient, solving problems at lower costs but it still fundamentally addresses the same set of problems security has been working on for years.

Matt points to an area where 'convergence' could have far greater consequences:

"Once other people in the organization start to leverage these tools, it adds an entirely new set of requirements on the people and processes involved. If the VP of Operations or VP of Marketing realizes that their team can benefit from video, then they will want it to be a tool that their teams can easily use."

The impact of this would and will have far greater changes on how we build, deploy and manage systems than any IT convergence is having.

Because of that, I am loathe to call this "convergence" because "convergence" is so overloaded with IT implications. Convergence might minimize the importance of this transformation.

Using Video for Operations and Marketing

While video surveillance has historically been a tool dedicated to security, the value of seeing and analyzing what is seen can have value to many organizations in a company. As such, expanding our mindsets to consider and plan for this much broader use is an important task for us.

This is a big topic and it requires a future, in-depth analysis but I will share one observation for now.

It is becoming clear that analytics are struggling in security tasks but showing good customer feedback in marketing and operation roles. This seems mostly a consequence of:

(1) security demands very high precision where operations and marketing are usually satisfied with trends

(2) the business value to be generated from operations and marketing improvements are generally higher than loss reduction

That being said, most video surveillance products have either limited or no support for marketing and operations tasks. So it is still early but the potential is definitely there and it appears to be much bigger than IT convergence.