Q&A: With some hurdles cleared, OSSA’s open, data-driven ecosystem taking flight

Since 2018, an open platform has been developing to enable the security and safety industry to work together smoothly across brands and systems to improve user experience and solutions. Pioneering the effort has been the Open Security & Safety Alliance (OSSA®). Delivering video-sensing solutions such as cameras and AI boxes, the open ecosystem is a reality.

We are turning to OSSA President Johan Jubbega and OSSA Strategy Committee Chair Steve Ma for a progress update. Why is now the perfect time to tap into this newly established open ecosystem? How are members working together to address important trends now and on the horizon? The discussion follows.

Solving industry problems

Q: How and why are you involved with OSSA?

Steve Ma: Our thinking as an industry has evolved, and we now realise that open designs and integrations are necessary in order to flourish and succeed in the security and safety space – and beyond, as our technologies often find application in neighbouring domains. My colleagues at VIVOTEK and I strive to be more collaborative, and therefore also more creative and innovative to be ready for the future. OSSA is the ideal forum.

Coming together in this manner helps organisations avoid reinventing the wheel

It helps to gather with other international companies that are committed to the same cause. As chairman of OSSA’s Strategy Committee, I am on the forefront of where we want to collaborate and standardise, and in turn where we prefer to leave room for individual diversification components. Coming together in this manner helps organisations avoid reinventing the wheel and allows us to effectively solve real industry problems with agility and intelligence. Eventually, I expect that our efforts within OSSA will lead to faster innovations and further dissemination of technology.

Johan Jubbega: Like Steve, I have been involved in OSSA from the beginning and witnessed the overwhelming willingness to collaborate in open ecosystems in our category. We are three years under way as an Alliance, and a lot of the hurdles have now been cleared.

The most compelling result of overcoming those obstacles involves our OSSA specifications and agreements that collectively allow third-party video (analytics) applications to run on agnostic brands of video-sensing devices. OSSA facilitates cooperation on many levels, and it’s important to me as president that our group remains approachable and accessible to anyone who shares in this vision of an open, data-driven ecosystem. We remind everyone the door is open, and there’s a role for stakeholders and large or small innovators to get involved at whatever effort and member level they wish.

Interoperable analytics apps

Q: Can you share thoughts on a couple of industry trends for 2022 and beyond?

Ma: Next-level dissemination and greater accessibility of technology is a big trend that will impact our security and safety landscape. Our industry will be able to facilitate and make better use of the incredibly rich data flows produced by devices and applications already deployed. Trust and clever data management are two important factors woven in here as we progress together into a new frontier of sharing data across apps, solutions, brands, borders, and continents.

Next-level dissemination and greater accessibility of technology is a big trend that will impact our security

In this type of collaboration, there are a lot of moving parts, and it requires input from the right stakeholders plus buy-in and adoption from the market. A good example of this is OSSA working on a series of data APIs: To prevent tight-coupling of (analytics) applications, which is at odds with the Alliance's openness, OSSA is working on a set of generic (vendor-independent) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for a uniform yet abstracted representation of objects of interest.

The goal is not just to identify ‘things’ by means of video analytics, but instead to aggregate this information from various devices to enable the descriptive relationships between those ‘things.’ The idea is to connect the dots between what, for example, a camera senses on the edge of a parking lot and what another camera captures inside or elsewhere using different but interoperable analytics apps and hardware. This will bring newfound knowledge around probabilities for safety, security, and beyond.

Jubbega: Yes, reaching new heights around what’s seen versus what’s sensed is going to be an amazing area we all break into together. The possibilities will be astounding of what we can hopefully soon be interpreting with all this data. IoT is certainly essential to this process, and thus another trend OSSA members are focused on is extending our open approach to adjacent areas across security, safety, and out into the broader IoT. This involves tapping into other domains so next-level concepts such as Digital Twins (the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process) can be facilitated more easily.

Video-sensing devices

Another working group within OSSA is focused this year on creating a test methodology

Q: How do these trends/resolutions tie back into the OSSA work groups’ focus for 2022?

Ma: As far as making stronger associations between data points, our members are working on a model that allows for this type of knowledge integration. The OSSA Data API aims to enable uniform consumption and the production of vast amounts of useful data attained by video-sensing devices.

As mentioned, trust will be critical as we start to rely more and more on information from other hardware and software sources. Another working group within OSSA is focused this year on creating a test methodology based on conformance specifications that serve as inputs for a forthcoming hardware Certification Model.

This effort will help guide the compatibility of OSSA standards to ensure quality and uniformity across Alliance outputs. Finally, as Johan alluded to, we see in the new world of IoT that innovation tends to spill over and bring benefits to nearby areas. We have the Beyond Video IP workgroup that’s focused on connecting our way of thinking to other domains in the security and safety space.

Agnostic operating system

Q: Why is now the time to get involved in the Open Security & Safely Alliance and the industry’s evolving Open Ecosystem?

Jubbega: The open platform principle we were founded on is transitioning from philosophy to real solutions that are now available to the market. We started by delivering a Technology Stack for video-sensing devices, paired with the first OSSA technology specifications that collectively enable third-party software and analytics to run agnostically on cameras that adhere to OSSA specifications.

An open Alliance like OSSA combined with a platform business model is the perfect solution to elevate us all

OSSA member company Azena – in parallel – created a corresponding and agnostic operating system associated with our industry’s biggest Analytics App Store. To date, there are 15-plus ‘Driven by OSSA’ hardware products from members that adhere to OSSA specifications, and users can mix and match those with 100-plus software apps that are enabled by OSSA specifications. So, a lot has already been taken care of, and that makes it an ideal time to get involved in the Alliance to further guide the trajectory of our future together.

Ma: I totally agree. Now is the right time because the platform (both the collaboration framework and technology) is finally here and ready for use. We have all been waiting for this reality to arrive. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can align and start to solve real industry problems exponentially by working collaboratively inside of, for instance, camera systems and AI boxes. An open Alliance like OSSA combined with a platform business model is the perfect solution to elevate us all. The market is going to move fast. And through OSSA and its specifications, we are ready to move with it.

New open ecosystem

Looking ahead to ISC West: Many OSSA spokespeople and member organisations will be at ISC West 2022, March 23-25. Johan Jubbega will be at the Bosch Building Technologies Booth #11053 and Steve Ma will be at the VIVOTEK Booth #22015.

Both companies, and other member organisations as well, will have ‘Driven by OSSA’ video-sensing products on display. Visitors are invited to stop by to talk about this new open ecosystem and how to join OSSA to cross-collaborate and bring about good change for the industry.