ONVIF, PSIA , SIA.  What are they?  Fringe terrorist groups?  l337 techno jargon?  No, they are standards organizations working on Network Video.

Standards can be very valuable to end customers and users of video products.  Value will come to customers by enabling increased competition (lower initial purchase cost) and ease of deployments (lower install cost) for video management software, recording hardware and cameras. In addition, significant value will come from being able to put together “best of breed” solutions.  eg: Solutions that use a combination of information management, video management, recording and cameras that best meet the needs of the customer.

A customer who has more reasons to buy is more likely to buy.   With more applications available, more customers are going to find value.

Hopefully this is what the competing Network Video standards bodies are vying for.

I hope the simplest, easy to obtain and use standard that also WORKS will win.  Having a low barrier to entry into the market will help spurn innovation and increase value for the end customer.  As a long time, but infrequent participant in the IETF (Internet standards body), I tend to lean towards the most simple setups that build off what’s already widely available and has a reference implementation running which is very low cost and/or freely available.

The Internet, the WWW and Voice over IP are all products of such a process.  However, most of the companies involved in the IP Camera/Network video market aren’t part of the Internet world.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple years.  (Yes, it’ll take at least that long)