Why PSIM Will NEVER Be Popular

I sat through a few presentations to an airport customer looking to purchase a PSIM. It was a learning experience finding out the separate needs and wants of the various departments who would be the system managers and end users.

The single largest detractor was cost.

Some products focused their pitch heavily on how it could bring multiple systems together and allowed changing of key components later without creating issues with the users. As an example, this airport through the years had two primary access control products installed in quantity and at least three VMS solutions to integrate. As the airport migrated to a single product of each the dependency on integrations would fade somewhat. Some products focused their pitch on how an emergency with a strong work flow and following reporting requirements could be easily managed across required inputs such as elevator, fire, escalator, gates, intrusion, people flow, access control, first responder access and more. Some focused extensively on the reduction of lifecycle training for operators by having a workflow driven common platform. Shorter training cycles and more useful and skilled personnel.

I guess until you have sat in an emergency center dispatch chair with radios and alarm going on a critical event and then had the biggest boss ask for something "NOW" that required pulling data from three systems it's hard to place a value on these things. With that said......they are expensive to install and maintain. A benefit is tying in 10 different systems. That becomes an albatross when you can't/won't/aren't ready to update one system and it holds you back on others or it breaks the system etc.

John,

Great article. You have touched on a few of the major limitations of PSIM. Here are a few more:

1. Most system configurations and settings still have to be performed using the application software of the underlying systems, not through the PSIM. Most PSIMs give you an integrated interface on the monitoring side, but not on the configuration side. This is a huge disappointment for end-users who think that they are getting a truly unified system.
2. All underlying applications need to continue to be supported and upgraded. Most upgrades will require that the PSIM "driver" that connects to the application also be upgraded, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars per upgrade.
3. The feature set of the combined systems usually defaults to the least capable feature set of all of the systems being integrated. For example, if one access control system supports global anti-passback, and another one doesn't, chances are good that the overall system won't have global anti-passback.

I believe that Steve Hunt, creator of the Security Dreamer blog (not very active these days) claims credit for coming up with the "PSIM" acronym. We have had a few lively debates over the years as to the future of PSIM. He had a greatly expanded view of how PSIM could be used, arguing that the data generated from such a system could be used not just for security, but for a multitude of other business related purposes.

Have heard that some customer's actually want a PSIM as it incorporates Case Management functionality as opposed to having to buy seperate Case Management Software. Any truth to this?

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?

We currently use a PSIM type software in Immix by Sureview to do video monitoring of our customers facilities. They had a failed attempt to move us to their new Cloud version which didnt perform as well as the Enterprise version, which they stopped any new development on. We use is for video monitoring and customer incident retrieval from the website so not much access integrated into it. Are there any other platforms comparable?

cloud was so much slower to load with exceeding their system requirements tremendously.

Must have

Dedicated Micros

VideoIQ/Avigilon

Xtralis

ICRealtime

DMP

Axis

Would like to add

Milestone

FLIR

Mobotix

VisualInt

Hikvision