Why PSIM Will NEVER Be Popular

Someone once told me that PSIM stood for:

• Perhaps
• Someday
• I'll
• Materialize

After I chuckled in response, we had a constructive conversation about it. Does it have its place? Sure, but I think as a distinct market segment it has 2 things going against it:

1. As a "layer" on top of other systems, it is a derivative product. As such, it is always going to be a small market.
2. "Fuzzy" definition. Frankly, any system that manages physical security information is a "PSIM", so how do you even define it, to a customer, as something that is distinct from a PACS or a VMS?

I noticed the following on Linkedin's PSIM Trends about PSIM being taken over by something called CSIM "Converged Security & Information Management"

Heck I haven't even gotten to PSIM!

So what's the main difference and advantages to CSIM over PSIM?

I love the Van analogy

Great article and had me laughing. Nice way to start the day.

Can you clarify, as you did with IDIS and ASIS, what the term's accepted pronounciation is:

1. P-S-I-M
2. P-SIM
3. (P)SIM with the P like (PSychology)

How many crimes prevented, how many arrests made? These are simple enough metrics for establishing PSIM value. Where is the proof?

This article brings back so many memories. Back to the days when we were trying to figure out what we were going to do about PSIM. Our parent business unit at the time saw it as a strategic imperative that they be able to leverage what PSIM seemed to offer. They were interested in the biggest integration projects and felt the need to offer everything to everything functionality. And not just about data integration but also workflow, ‘rules engines,’ geospatial, lots of reporting. PSIM to them was another integration platform arrow in their quiver. Pelco’s interests were a little more tactical--we just needed to stave off competition from other VMS that had more/better integration with third party access or intrusion systems. There was a tricky balance to be had accomodating use cases in our own VMS vs giving up others to the PSIM. In both cases we were looking at the upper right quadrant on a chart with criticality in one axis and integration complexity on the other axis.

What happened next might be predictable. Look at all the possibilities, get overwhelmed by the permutations, admit that no one product would solve all needs, decide to ‘partner’ with all of them. Basically, we went from a build-vs-buy-a-PSIM discussion to deciding to do nothing.

As a software abstractionist it didn’t surprise me. Successful integration frameworks emerge when many integrations happen and common patterns emerge that can be encapsulated into reusable components. The best integration frameworks (that is, those that actually work), are the result of many many iterations. PSIM would never quite get there for a number of reasons: lack of standards, lack of sufficient economic drivers, simply lack of enough jobs that required the integrations. PSIM was really about taking snapshots of integration implementations and trying to say those were products. Without enough customers in need of exactly that same implementation, there’s no market.

So then is this accurate?

NICE (or the company formerly known as NICE) is campaigning against the term PSIM now:

“PSIM is not the right term for where we’re heading; PSIM is the wrong terminology for the right technology,” he says. “Until the industry comes up with a better term, there will continue to be confusion about what PSIM is and isn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if a new term emerged within the next six to 12 months.”

I like this article as it touches on a lot of key points that I've been dealing with over the last 4-5 years. And I agree that the word PSIM is thrown around loosely without thought. That beings said, we've successfully deployed a PSIM platform and is currently integrated and running, connected to 27 different sub-systems from CCTV, ACS to Elevators, Escalators and even controlling lock-boxes for tender documents.

The product we're using is probably the most expensive, but is of them all the most expandable and customize-able one out there. IPSecurityCenter by CNL is the product we're using and we also create our own in-house driver base to connect to almost ANYTHING.

The KEY thing in doing so is proper project and sub-system management. This touches on something mentioned earlier around "Version Management". At first this was our biggest headache as sub-system vendors would come on site maintaining their equipment and upgrading software willy-nilly causing driver incompatibility. However we caught this issue early on and could establish corporate policy for change-control to avoid this.

Running and maintaining it is a full-time job and requires a lot of continuous communications with the end-user to provide the information (the "I" in PSIM) that he/she NEEDS, not wants. A PSIM platform that does not change during its lifetime is now a big white elephant. If your PSIM platform doesn't allow for these changes, you've invested in the wrong product.

The biggest benefits we've achieved with our deployment are:
> Less operators to train to monitor the vast amount of sub-systems
> Expose sub-system maintenance flaws
> Speed up maintenance procedures by passing info directly into ERP Plant Maintenance Applications (like SAP)
> Expose lazy operators
> Manage security staff
> Minimize false alarms (consolidating different sub-system events as a single true alarm rather than creating alarm instances for each sub-system event)
> Many more

In the end it's how you drive it and how willing you are to manage and maintain it.