Vendor Misrepresents ONVIF in Trade Advertisement

While ONVIF has been widely accepted as the 'independent' protocol of choice for integrating IP cameras and VMS software, problems with real world integration remain common (as our ONVIF field test results indicate). Given this, we were surprised to see a full page advertisement in an April 2011 trade magazine [link no longer available] touting, "Easy integration with ONVIF / Easy Setup User Friendly No Hassles."

I doubt even ONVIF itself would take this stand. Indeed, none of the principals in ONVIF (Axis, Bosch, Sony) have ever made such a claim for their own ONVIF products. We expect their people fully recognize the current challenges and growing pains that ONVIF is going through.

On one level, this advertisement by a fairly unknown company (Bolide) can be dismissed as the rogue actions of a smaller company trying to get attention. On the other hand, as PSASecurity acknowledged, many sales people's knowledge comes mostly from these advertisements [link no longer available].

Manufacturer advertisements are expected to have a degree of self-promotion and inaccuracy. Generally, though, these are subjective - proclamations of 'best', 'greatest', 'leading', etc. Manufacturers typically stay away from specific technical proclamations like ONVIF providing 'No Hassles' as it is so easy and quick for a user to discover how painfully untrue the claim is.