ISC West 2011, key themes From the show

At what was a busy show in Las Vegas, there were three key themes that stood out:

1. PSIM (Physical Security Information Management) Software

This was undoubtedly the biggest buzz circulating the showfloor.  Announcements included the acquisition of Rontal by Verint, the acquisition of Proximex by Tyco and a new PSIM partnership between Honeywell and Boeing.

In a recent press release, IMS Research forecast that the world market PSIM will be worth $200 million in 2014. Whilst the recent news of acquisition and collaboration will impacted the market structure and raised the profile of PSIM software, IMS Research does not believe that recent events will significantly impact the short to mid-term forecast. PSIM software is generally only deployed on high value, mission critical projects and despite the recent annoucements, they are unlikely to have an immediate impact on the extremely protracted sales cycles for these kinds of projects.

2. HD Transmission over Coax

There were two flavours of HD transmission over coax present at the show: 

1.Uncompressed

2.Compressed

With regards to the uncompressed variety, transmission via the HD-SDI standard (or a variant), increasing numbers of manufacturers (predominately from Asia) were either demoing or announcing products utilising this transport medium.

Regarding the compressed version, Sony and Intersil announced a new category of cameras using the SLOC (Security Link over Coax) transmission solution. This technology enables the transmission of simultaneous analogue and compressed HD video over a single coax cable. 

Irrespective of transmission type, it appears that a growing number of manufacturers are beginning to introduce products that leverage the reuse of the existing analogue infrastructure.

3. No "WOW" factor

For a show set in Las Vegas, there was a distinct lack of "razzmatazz". In previous years, the introduction of network video surveillance products, video analytics and megapixel/HD resolution network cameras have all been show defining themes. And whilst there were several interesting and novel products demoed at the show, it would be difficult to pick out anything that could be considered a radical innovation.

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