'Standards' Production Support: ONVIF Outpaces PSIA

JH
John Honovich
•Published Jul 23, 2010 00:00 AM
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ONVIF adoption is far outpacing PSIA in almost 1 year of manufacturer announcements for 'standards' production support. As of July 2010, according to the 2 group's conformant product lists, ONVIF reports 33 manufacturers [link no longer available] supporting their 'standard', while PSIA only lists 2 manufacturers [link no longer available] (Texas Instruments and IQinVision).

The magnitude of the gap is likely somewhat less than the total number noted on each list. ONVIF released its conformance tool over 6 months ago while PSIA released their conformance tool [link no longer available] only 1-2 months ago. As such, there are likely a number of other manufacturers who are shipping in production but have not done the test or not yet published their results (e.g., Milestone supports PSIA since last December and Luxriot announced PSIA support in their April release [link no longer available]). Secondly, given Texas Instrument's large role as a component supplier for IP cameras, their adoption and support of PSIA should foster its use in their camera manufacturer partners.

This noted, ONVIF's lead in production support is large and notable. The 33 manufacturers represent a broad cross section of manufacturers, geographically and by market position. Interesting new additions include major VMS/NVR suppliers such as Axxon, Dallmeier, Genetec, GVI and Siemens. In addition, a broad range of large Asian manufacturers list product support including Dahua, Dynacolor, Geovision, Hikvision, Hitron, Messoa and Vivotek.

We believe production support levels are the best indicator of future success. Interoperability specifications benefit from network effects - a standard's value increase the more others use it. Unless PSIA closes the gap in product support quickly, it will be hard to justify not going to ONVIF and benefit from gaining interoperability with the broad number of product already supporting ONVIF.

In this process, PSIA's easier implementation and broader goals for supporting recorders, analytics, access control, etc. have been cited as key advantages for the PSIA. We agree with these strengths. However, we are skeptical that they can trump ONVIF's greater market power and now greater production support for IP cameras.

This note updates our April 2010 status report on standards progress.