Page 64 - Security Today, April 2018

The Evolution of a Standard BOy Per Björkdahl
NVIF has achieved a lot since its founding in 2008. The member consortium began as a small group of manufacturers that wanted to collaborate to accel- erate the acceptance of systems based on network surveillance cameras. While the mission of ONVIF
hasn’t changed significantly since then, its application and influence has: ONVIF is now an industry alliance for the physical security in- dustry to which most of the industry’s major manufacturers belong.
With members on six continents and nearly 10,000 products that conform to our specifications for video and access control, ONVIF specifications have been adopted by the International Electrical Commission, one of the world’s most influential standards organiza- tions. Not bad in ten years.
Like many other standards, ONVIF has evolved incrementally and its development, use and acceptance have as well. The journey ONVIF is on is actually quite typical for a standards organization. Other standards such as IEC, the Institute of Electrical and Elec- tronics Engineers (IEEE), HDMI and Bluetooth have experienced similar ebbs and flows, hurdles, successes and acceptance in many of the same ways that ONVIF has. Over time, these organizations have expanded the scope of their standards, adopted their approaches to standardization when needed and have also dealt with issues of false conformance.
Building a Foundation
Standards organizations are often founded to create, at least ini- tially, one specific kind of benchmark within an industry. ONVIF was founded by Axis, Sony and Bosch to create a global standard for the interface of network cameras and video management sys- tems in order to be an alternative to the long standardized analog CCTV industry.
The organization sought to provide greater freedom of choice so installers and end users can select interoperable products from a variety of different vendors. By establishing a basic standard for video in its early days, the founders also hoped to rationalize prod- uct development for manufacturers. The philosophy was that estab- lishing a basic integration standard within the industry would allow developers to spend more time on creating innovative features and designs and less effort on creating multiple APIs for basic integra- tions between products.
Although members had agreed on how to specify APIs for video, how different manufacturers deployed ONVIF in their products var- ied. All followed the specification, but there was not agreement on which features to support. For example, a camera manufacturer may have only implemented specific video functions to interact with an- other manufacturer’s VMS using ONVIF, but that particular VMS supports many additional functions of that camera. So when users of the VMS expected to be able to utilize a specific function in the camera, it was not supported through ONVIF.
A Broadening Vision
To address these variations in supported features between manu- facturers, ONVIF implemented the Profile concept, which defines groups of individual features and implementation specifics under one umbrella. The first profile, Profile S, was released in 2011 following two years in development. If a product is Profile S conformant, it will always be conformant, regardless of when it was manufactured.
Bluetooth experienced a similar chain of events in 2005. Blue- tooth’s newer version of the specification didn’t initially support an older version of the specification and, as a result, conformant devices
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did not work with newer devices. In response, Bluetooth introduced ‘Headset Profile,’ designed to work regardless of manufacture date. Once HSP was defined, it wasn’t to be changed. A new profile with a new name was created when future changes were needed—the same profile approach ONVIF employs.
Two years after its founding, ONVIF extended its scope to include access control. Because of the framework established, the group’s scope for standards can include any discipline within the physical se- curity industry and is no longer solely focused on video. ONVIF has continued to use the profile concept to develop and release five addi- tional profiles: Profile G for video storage, Profiles C and A for access control, Profile Q for easy installation and the Release Candidate for Profile T for advanced streaming, due for final release in mid-2018.
False Claims
With greater adoption of ONVIF profiles and a growing usage with- in the industry, false claims of ONVIF conformance have also in- creased. In many cases, false ONVIF conformance claims are based on misunderstandings of a company’s misuse of the ONVIF trade- mark or a member company’s misunderstanding of the requirements of membership.
For example, because ONVIF conformance is specific to a prod- uct offered by a specific member, companies that offer rebranded OEM products must retest and submit new documentation to show valid conformance for each product even though the original product is ONVIF certified.
Similarly, even standards bodies that span multiple diverse in- dustries experience the problem of false claims of conformance on an ongoing basis, whether confronting counterfeit products or false claims of conformance. If a brand has value, chances are great that false claims will be an ongoing issue.
We educate members and the industry at large about what the ON- VIF name means by attending trade shows and conferences, speaking at events and holding online training sessions on an ongoing basis. ONVIF also has developed an online false conformance reporting tool to encourage members and non-members to report suspected false claims. ONVIF maintains a current list of its members on its website so the industry can easily determine whether a manufacturer is an ONVIF member and ONVIF conformant.
ONVIF GROWTH
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