Increased visitor attendance, higher quality conversations and new security products unveiled at ASIS

Foot traffic improved a little on the second day of ASIS International in Anaheim, California. Furthermore, the high quality of meetings at the big industry show tended to overshadow complaints about attendance. There is plenty to talk about in Anaheim.

“The conversations have been much more substantial than you usually have at a trade show,” says Charles Hunger, Product Marketing Director, Anviz Global Inc. “They’re not general conversations, they’re ‘How can I use it? I have a very specific problem I need to solve.”

Cloud-based services for biometric access control

Anviz specialises in small- to medium-sized business (SMB) applications. The company’s biometric time-and-attendance systems are strong in the retail/restaurant/small medical facility market, while the manufacturing vertical favours Anviz biometric access control applications. A relative newcomer to the U.S. market, Anviz announced at ASIS that it will begin offering cloud-based services for biometric access control and time and attendance. In business since 2001, Anviz has been successful in the Latin American market (especially Argentina) and entered the U.S. market in 2010, selling products manufactured in Shanghai, China, including a line of surveillance cameras branded under the Anviz name. The company has about two dozen dealers across North America, moving deliberately with a strategy to pay for growth in the U.S.  market from sales revenues.

OnSSI Ocularis v5.0

ASIS is a great venue to highlight product improvements, and some new products introduced just last spring have been upgraded and improved since their initial launch. For example, OnSSI introduced Ocularis Version 5.0 in the spring, the first version of OnSSI’s flagship software that uses the company’s own recorder (versus an OEM’d recorder.) Ocularis Version 5.1 now includes additional integrations with camera manufacturers, including Arecont Vision and Canon, in addition to the cameras previously supported. The system also uses server-based motion detection.

Fully encrypted using 256-bit AES, the software can be used in banking and government applications.The system also manages storage of video and load-balances storage among multiple drives to increase capacity.

“The customer reaction to Ocularis 5 has been tremendous,” says Ken LaMarca, OnSSI’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “They are embracing it because it is a wholly owned product.” He says the quality of attendees at OnSSI’s booth has been very good. “But there haven’t been enough of them.”

Placing confidence in the uniqueness of a product line is a good strategy in the era of commoditisation. That seems to be the case for MOBOTIX, which has always charted its own product development course. The German company emphasised IP video when analogue was still dominant, and they were also early to the idea of edge storage. Even with a heritage of innovation, Keith Jernigan, MOBOTIX General Manager, says the company needs to work to educate the market on who they are. 

New thermal cameras

Offering hemispheric cameras, a new thermal radiometry camera and improved video management software (VMS) that is touch-screen and intuitive to operate, the company has a lot to tell the market about. There is also a 6 megapixel camera in the lineup and “Moonlight” low-light imaging. “We believe in the technologies the company was founded on,” says Jernigan, noting that many technologies have become more common since they were pioneered by MOBOTIX. Another message for MOBOTIX at the show is use of video for functions beyond security, such as use of the new thermal camera to detect temperature extremes to monitor manufacturing or other processes.

Open house events

After the show closed, events in the evening continued to draw crowds, including two open house events in nearby Irvine, Calif., a centre of technology. Axis Communications hosted an open house at their new “Axis Experience Center,” a learning facility that can host up to 28 people and also focuses on use of Axis products in a variety of vertical markets, with full displays of systems targeted to markets such as gaming, education, retail and banking.

A short ride away, Dahua was also hosting an open house at its Irvine facility. The Chinese company is on the verge of expanding its presence in the U.S. market, building its channel, and positioning Dahua as a trusted brand in the video surveillance market. The company has been in the U.S. market for years as an OEM/ODM manufacturer, but is now beginning to build up its branded business. The global company is already selling products, including HD cameras, NVRs, video display walls, VMS software and video analytics, in 140 countries. It’s one of the companies that makes the ASIS show truly international.