Challenges in Supporting 3rd Party IP Cameras

A few people asked about the difficulties for adding VMS support for IP cameras. A key difficulty is that there are two vendors that most IP camera manufacturers want support from - Milestone and Genetec. The reason is a combination of large market share and general openness to adding in 3rd party cameras (many other VMS providers have one of the two traits but not both). As Genetec explained, "You have no idea how much integration requests we receive every week, on top of widely distributed manufacturers, there are many localized camera/encoder vendors that are doing good in specifics vertical market." Even if any individual integration is easy, the waiting list for integration builds because of the sheer mass of IP camera manufacturers worldwide asking for support.

What will be interesting to see is how much easier ONVIF and/or PSIA make it for IP camera integrations and how soon that comes.

[Update 2012: While integration problems still arise on some ONVIF connections, overall this need is now being met through ONVIF.]