SureView Systems Immix Overview

•Published Nov 02, 2011 00:00 AM

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The greatest barrier to PSIM adoption has been pricing. Deployments are routinely hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. This leaves customers with disparate systems who could benefit from integration with few options. SureView Systems is aiming to change this, offering "blue collar" PSIM at prices much lower than competitive options. In this update, we will examine their Immix offering and its featureset.

Product Overview

SureView's Immix [link no longer available] was originally intended for central station monitoring centers, to add video monitoring capability to central station automation systems which otherwise lacked it. However, realizing that central stations are a finite market, SureView has offered Immix to end user security departments, as well. Unlike many other competitors, Immix only integrates security systems, choosing to ignore integrations to HR and building management systems which other providers may include.

SureView's list of integration partners [link no longer available] is substantial (currently listed at 49 on their website), including: major VMS/DVR players such as Genetec, Milestone, Panasonic, Avigilon, as well as intrusion detection and access control systems from Brivo, Bosch, Videofied, and others. New integrations are added on a frequent basis. Part of this is due to their position in the central station market, which requires much wider support of varying products, and a partner list of more common products (such as low-end Honeywell and Hikvision DVRs) than many PSIM vendors. SureView has also released an API to manufacturers who would like to add integration to Immix to their products. So, while integrations continue to be created in-house on a project basis, VMS, access control, and other security product vendors also contribute integrations.

Immix itself currently consists of server and client portions. Configuration and monitoring use different client software. The monitoring client is capable of several different viewing layouts, depending on what is required. There are two which are likely of most use to users:

First, users may view multiple cameras in a split-screen layout, like a traditional VMS client. This is most commonly used for viewing live video, or a small number of cameras.
Second is the alarm view, which lists alarms as they are generated. Users may then click through to specific alarms. The alarm screen displays a looped clip of the incident, as well as the current live view. Additionally, maps, procedures, and other cameras may all be displayed. What is presented to an operator on alarm is configurable per alarm point, so forced door alarms may provide different procedures than video analytic alarms.

Immix Pricing

Immix is substantially less expensive than competitive products, which are normally beyond six figures even for small deployements. While it does not include every feature of the more commonly-named PSIM products (such as Vidsys, CNL, and Proximex), it accomplishes the main function most users are interested in: integration of disparate systems and association of events and video across multiple systems.

A 500 camera/500 reader Immix Enterprise deployement has an MSRP of $75,000, which includes on-site commissioning of the system. Contrast this to a 1000-device VidSys VidShield license, which is listed at $237,000 on the GSA Schedule, more than three times the price of Immix.

Base license pricing does not change based on size of the system, and pricing per point scales based on quanity. So, a smaller system, perhaps 100 cameras and 50 readers, will run in the $20,000-30,000 range, as camera licenses will be more expensive.

Immix Cloud

Today, Immix's client software relies on Windows. The next version, to be released starting in November 2011, Immix Cloud [link no longer available], will be 100% web-based and platform independent. It requires Flash, but no ActiveX or other platform-specific plugins. The interface contains essentially the same information, though it has been reorganized, redesigned, and streamlined.

While Immix cloud may also be run, like Enterprise, in a simple client/server fashion (though no client software is needed), it also adds the capability for the software to be run in a cloud computing environment. This is intended to allow the system to be more fault tolerant and highly available, and monitoring to be performed more easily from multiple locations. Immix cloud also offers support for mobile devices, with the iPad and iPhone coming in the first release, and Android to be added later.