20 Manufacturer Favorability Ranked 2017

Author: IPVM Team, Published on Feb 28, 2017

20 security industry organizations' favorability was ranked based on direct feedback from over 100 integrators. In-depth comments revealed insights on which brands were well regarded for value or support, and which were viewed as out of date, overpriced, or mistrusted.

Organizations covered:

Notes:

  • These results, as with all IPVM research, may NOT be used promotionally, as it violates our terms of service and is against our fundamental philosophy of independence and research, not marketing.
  • These organizations were chosen based on our statistics of what our global membership base is most interested in having reviewed. If your company or your partner is not listed here, it does not imply they are bad (or good). It simply means in our analysis not enough of our members are interested or know who your company is.

Inside, we share:

  • Net Favorability Results Ranked
  • Asian Manufacturers Results Ranked
  • North American Manufacturers Results Ranked
  • VMS Rankings
  • All 20 manufacturers ranking breakouts with analysis
  • Alphabetical Ranking Chart

Overall Rankings

The following chart shows the overall net favorability (positive votes - negative votes) for each organization in our favorability series, we also provide a summary of each company below.

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Asian *********

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Avigilon *******

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Axis *******

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Cisco *******

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Exacq *******

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FLIR *******

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Genetec *******

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Hanwha *******

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Hikvision *******

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Honeywell *******

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Lenel *******

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Milestone *******

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OnSSI *******

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ONVIF *******

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Panasonic *******

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Pelco *******

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Sony *******

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Vivotek *******

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Alphabetical *******

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Comments (23)

Avatar

Mark Jones

02/28/17 04:39pm

Given the strength of the negative numbers, how does Arecont stay in business? Someone is buying their equipment.

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | In reply to Mark Jones | 02/28/17 05:41pm

Mark - good question. There are some interesting perspectives on this in the Are You a True Fan Of Arecont Cameras? discussion.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Mark Jones | 02/28/17 09:42pm

how does Arecont stay in business?

Staying in business is a low bar. Remember, Arecont before all the quality problems, was one of the fastest growing companies in the industry.

Best explanation includes: strength in multi-imagers, almost all their projects include multi-imagers; lots of sales people and rep firms; quality is better than their reputation because integrators have long memories.

Avatar

Gavin Hill

In reply to John Honovich | 03/01/17 06:12am

I'm considering AV multi-imagers and was re-assured recently that their quality issues have been addressed and are reflected in their RMA numbers. I have to say their UI is awful but once it's set up and integrated to a VMS I can't fault the image quality. As you say John, perhaps I don't have the legacy with AV that more established integrators do,

Undisclosed Manufacturer #4

In reply to John Honovich | 03/01/17 08:07pm

Considering the fact that Vicon is still in business, the bar for survival is indeed set VERY low.

Avatar

Christopher Wilcox

IPVMU Certified | 02/28/17 06:00pm

We primarily use Axis cameras. Their performance and reliability are very good in our environment. We also use Arecont, Bosch, Samsung, and Sony. All of these cameras work well too, but we have found that these cameras fail a little more often and their user interfaces are not as user friendly.

Undisclosed Manufacturer #1

02/28/17 06:23pm

Might wanna view the "Asian Campanies" chart upside down or in mirror image. Thought that's true reflection of who's who, in terms of impacting video industry. Am I the only one?

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #1 | 02/28/17 09:44pm

Might wanna view the "Asian Campanies" chart upside down or in mirror image. Thought that's true reflection of who's who, in terms of impacting video industry. Am I the only one?

Good observation, I concur that companies impacting the industry the most are the ones on the bottom of the list.

I think that signals that both Dahua and Hikvision have serious issues to face. For now, they can keep cutting prices and throwing more money at sales and marketing to compensate for that, but it is a yellow flag for the sustainability of that.

Undisclosed Integrator #2

In reply to John Honovich | 02/28/17 11:29pm

I think that signals that both Dahua and Hikvision have serious issues to face. For now, they can keep cutting prices and throwing more money at sales and marketing to compensate for that, but it is a yellow flag for the sustainability of that.

Just waiting for the right bubble to burst.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #2 | 03/01/17 12:37am

right bubble to burst.

Yes, but it could be 6 months, it could be 6 years, it could be a soft landing, it could be a hard one. When and how it happens matters a lot. The longer it goes the deeper the damage.

Undisclosed Manufacturer #3

03/01/17 05:51pm

Are all these results from current surveys (2016)? Some of these reports of individual companies look very similar to what I have seen before.

I am also wondering who and how the data is collected. I see reference to the global membership base, but usually reports such as these give empirical data on the respondent samples etc. to show that at least a reasonable base response was received.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #3 | 03/01/17 05:54pm

Some of these reports of individual companies look very similar to what I have seen before.

We published each of the individual reports first over the past 2 months and then released this whole report. So if you have been reading IPVM regularly over that time, surely you have seen a number of the individual reports.

usually reports such as these give empirical data on the respondent samples etc. to show that at least a reasonable base response was received.

Can you point to another report like this where the empirical data was given? I am not sure specific metrics that you are asking about but if you share one, we can then look into providing you similar data.

Undisclosed Manufacturer #3

In reply to John Honovich | 03/01/17 07:30pm

I have been reading posting and been on the website reading things, so that may explain why things seemed familiar.

I regard to the empirical data question. No I cannot site another report like yours. In fact I think you do a service to the Security Community that is uncommon.

I guess my flaw is that I have dealt with a lot of reports on other topics that are statistical in nature and studied statistics in college as it related to behavioral science and business. So my analytic hat comes out when I see results such as these and I start looking closely at the information. And when I get into this mode I want meat! :-)

Also part of the reason for my inquiry is because I have learned from my experience that if you are studying survey results for a thing and the sample of respondents and the scale they have to chose from is small then the skew can be significant and potentially misleading. Not that it would be intentional, but for me as a consumer of the information, it helps me, over analytic as I may be, to understand this.

Lastly, as you see, I am posted as unknown manufacturer #3. I prefer to not have any bias I might have be part of this conversation as I monitor this to see what I can do, being part of a manufacturer, to effect change and move the needle in a positive way.

Whether the company I work for is in the positive or negative, I believe we all should be looking to constantly improve and if we have more information about how the conclusions in you reports have been reached, the service you provide teh community overall is all the more valuable.

Sorry for the long response, but I hope that helps explain where I am coming from.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #3 | 03/01/17 10:57pm

Thanks for the feedback.

the sample of respondents and the scale they have to chose from is small then the skew can be significant and potentially misleading.

The biggest issue in doing surveys and trusting them, to your point, is how the composition of the surveyed relate / reflect the composition of the entire population.

We do the surveys based on IPVM integrator members and we can verify / check to see who took the survey.

The more interesting / challenging question is do the integrators who take the surveys reflect security integrators in general.

There are a couple of clear skews:

  • Everyone who answers writes English, which of course limits us to English speaking companies and generally fairly well educated people in other countries.
  • Related to that, given the English requirement, the respondents skew to English speaking countries (~2/3rds in North America, another ~10% in Oceania and the UK). So IPVM surveys may misrepresent integrators in Germany, who might, e.g., love Bosch.

Beyond that, I do think it is fairly representative since IPVM is an open site and its priced at a point that one man shops to employees at nationals can afford. We see that in the results. We have respondents from the big three letter integrators to the regionals to locals to one man shops.

We make a good faith effort to be accurate and we are happy to take steps to make it even better based on member feedback. If you have suggestions, let us know any time.

Avatar

Brian Karas

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed Manufacturer #3 | 03/01/17 05:56pm

Yes.

We broke the survey into two batches of 10, and they both went out in December 2016, so all feedback was collected at roughly the same time, and was new/updated from any previous survey data on these companies.

Avatar

Campbell Chang

03/01/17 10:26pm

I have no idea if you can or if you have enough data, but I'd be interested to see the geographical representations too.

I understand that IPVM is primarily American but they obviously cater to the international audience so seeing how the Asian giants fared outside the NA market would be interesting.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Campbell Chang | 03/01/17 11:04pm

Campbell, we just don't have enough of an audience in non English speaking countries to say something.

For example, it would be great to know what integrators inside China think about Dahua and Hikvision but since a lot / most don't speak English, we are constrained in what we can obtain. It is a certainly a limitation we need to work on improving on in the future.

Avatar

Campbell Chang

In reply to John Honovich | 03/01/17 11:34pm

I wasn't thinking you'd drill down that far but could you do it on a continental basis or even NA vs Rest of World?

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Campbell Chang | 03/01/17 11:37pm

could you do it on a continental basis or even NA vs Rest of World?

We can't do easily do that now but we can add a feature to programmatically apply segmentation by geography. I've queued that up. Thanks.

Avatar

LLOYD O'MEALLY

IPVMU Certified | 03/07/17 02:37pm

A little disappointed in where Pelco falls in the line-up.

Are there any real tangible "bad" products or experiences or its just a feel because of a new parent company. I'm managing a project now (turnkey) and the integrator is proposing a Milestone/Pelco mix.

its not too late to suggest modifications but am concerned if the Halo around Pelco is real or its just an anti-Schneider sentiment.

John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to LLOYD O'MEALLY | 03/07/17 02:40pm

because of a new parent company

Schneider has owned Pelco for a nearly a decade.

Are there any real tangible "bad" products

The VMSes over the years have disappointed relative to competitors. They have recently built a new one, VideoXpert, which is still relatively early. The cameras overall have lagged and been more expensive though the multi-imagers are competitive (see 180 test and 270 test).

Avatar

LLOYD O'MEALLY

IPVMU Certified | 03/07/17 02:44pm

Thanks for that John. Certainly, we would not consider their VMS's, but are giving the cameras due consideration.

Undisclosed End User #5

In reply to LLOYD O'MEALLY | 03/07/17 03:21pm

Unless the Pelco cameras are significantly cheaper than say a comparable AXIS camera I would not consider Pelco a good choice. If they have a reason to spec the Pelco brand, as opposed to some of the other "higher end" brands, I would be very interested in hearing it.

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