ISC West came and went and we did not have a booth — too much of a cattle-call, same old same old. However, there's some serious lip service being paid to open source platforms for surveillance (SecurityInfoWatch):
HID's Hebert admitted that he used to think in a more "proprietary" manner when it came to access control, but his thinking has been changing over the years. When asked what specifically got him to change his mind to embrace open platforms, he said that he remembered running into trouble one time trying to sell an access control system that needed to run on a certain type of computer -- and he recounted the frustration that the sale of that access system depended on the end-user adopting one particular type of computer. It was experiences like that, said Hebert, which made him a strong advocate of open standards. "HID believes that open standards are going to become a reality," he said.
As you know Airship is an open-source platform, and it's one of our biggest differentiators that our systems integrate with third-party and other vendors' products — without backpedaling...
Both said that open platforms is a significant paradigm shift for the entire industry, and they admitted that no one expects it to happen overnight. As for possible future plans, Hebert acknowledged that he could see more partnerships happening in the future much like HID's partnership with Lenel, especially as physical security and IT continue to converge. "In the IT world, everything is about alliances," he said.
Abigail



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