Vote Results - Next Big Thing 2020

Over 230 integrators and manufacturers told us what they believe will be the next big thing in video surveillance 5 years from now, in 2020.

The top two took more than 50% of the vote. They were:

• Video analytics
• Hosted video

Inside this note, we examine who they beat out and what rationales were given for each of the choices.

Both manufacturers and integrators had very similar selection patterns. First, here are the manufacturer results:

Now, here are the integrator choices, quite similar overall, but with moderate more support for super high resolution and less for H.265.

Video Analytics

Like in the 2012 Next Big Thing poll, video analytics was top with the same percentage of votes - 38-39%.

• "Video analytics. It's time, no really this time. We are (IMO) seeing a lot more involvement in video analytics/machine vision in applications outside of security. Facebook, google, etc., all these companies are working on projects that are analytics-related, which will trickle down into security applications."
• "For now, customers are not ready to pay extra huge money and resources to support server analytics, so edge analytics will change this, because at zero cost they can have all benefits of video analytics."
• "Video analytics offered as a service will enable the enterprise (not just for security) to gather actionable situational and augmented profile data."
• "With new processors manufacturer will be able to get better result from the analytics, and this will increase the alarm level and save time."
• "What I personally hope for is FO to the house at an affordable price. Bandwidth limitations is what keeps the a lot of the mentioned choices dominating the CCTV market."
• "I think soon cameras will start to deliver a depth information (through stereo vision or depth sensors) and future analytics will be based on 3D data and will provide much more precise and complex analytics based on scenarios"

There were a few explicit video analytics naysers on the manufacturering side, including three who mentioned Avigilon's patent enforcement campaign, such as "Patent Armageddon attacks from Avaligon. I don't think any new products can be built without crossing through an existing patent."

Hosted Video

In 2012, hosted video and edge storage were tied for second. This has changed remarkably in 2015, with edge storage votes plummeting. This, undoubtedly reflects the significant problems edge storage has had in the past 3 years.

On the hosted side, manufacturers suggested:

• "I think the biggest thing is Hosted Video. As the cost to network bandwidth and storage get cheaper and cheaper, there is no reason to host the video on our own. The hosted video will be a common and cost-effective solution to small-medium market."
• "I believe that Video Analytics as a provisioned service from a hosted environment could be uniquely positioned as a solution inside very specific vertical markets, providing not only risk mitigation but business relevant solutions."
• "Getting rid of the "server" in the client server relationship will remedy many of the problems integrators run into including SMA /OS / Server HW not built to spec / updates & patches / firmware etc. It also opens up an RMR revenue stream that many will appreciate."
• "Objections to the ease of a hosted solution will be gone as internet pipes get cheaper and larger and costing of hosted solutions will be a fraction of what they are now. Compound this with service based offerings and analytics in the cloud make this a very powerful draw."

Integrators emphasized customer demand in cloud generally and decling bandwidth costs:

• "As customers become more comfortable with cloud solutions they will start to see the benefits and will what other systems and services to be provide in the same fashion."
• "Customer's love to move things to the 'cloud' so this trend is going to likely continue."
• "The cost of internet bandwidth is dropping while the size of the "pipe" is growing with some carriers. This will help break-open the barrier that prevents most small businesses and distributed enterprise organizations from using off-premise rather than on-premise solutions."
• "With bandwidth availability / throughput growing and getting more affordable, hosted video will see huge growth over the next 5 years."

Others

A number of people wrote in their own choices. Below are our highlights of interesting submissions.

Drones

A few respondents called out drones, which are definitely a segment on the rise outside of security purposes as well:

• "I believe the proliferation of Drone Technology will be the next segment of the security industry to take off (pun intended)!!! The ability for a municipality, federal governmental agency or private company to launch a drone into critical situations that is tied to their existing VMS has tremendous value and the technology to be able to that is just about here. In the next five years I think most of the top tier brands will be selling some type of surveillance drone for private use."
• "Drones. Not sure exactly how but could be supplementing coverage at large facilities. The cost & learning curve are going down quickly. I have a 4k camera on mine & have used it to give prospects better visual of desired coverage & blind spots"

Wearables

Especially in the US with the recent anti-police riots, body cameras are getting a lot more attention and appreciation as one respondent noted:

"Wearable video. Police, guard services, retail, and anyone else who interacts with other people will start wearing a camera. Then we will see analytics like facial recognition, people counting, and even mood detection popping up."

HaaS

One respondent proposed selling video surveillance hardware as a service:

"The biggest impact in five years will be HaaS -- Hardware as a Service. When the cost on a basic IP camera is $30US, providing it for $5 per month starts to make sense. This isn't as avant-garde as one might think; cable/dish/Internet services have been HaaS for many years, so why should VSaaS be any different?"

Imager Sensitivity

Finally, one respondent noted developments on the imager side:

"I believe sensitivity increase will be the biggest improvement: - Less lighting needed - Less noise in the pictures which will improve compression (reduce the bandwidth consumption) and also improve video analytics performance."

IPVM's Take

In the near future, IPVM will issue its own Predictions for 2020.

The biggest risk in assessing what will be the next big thing is understanding what technologies will actually improve and by how much. For example, video analytics has been the next big thing since at least 2005 and remains that way today. For video analytics or hosted video or any other emerging offering, the risk is always that the technology does not improve enough to be performance and/or cost effective for buyer's needs and relative to alternative offerings.