Continental View

IMS Research’s 2009 European conference on video content analysis (VCA) took place in Brussels this week, and two major themes dominated: the need for more education on VCA in the marketplace on all sides and the importance of managing expectations when it comes to what the technology can and can not do.

Integrators on two panel discussions I moderated—one aimed at scrutinizing the benefits of VCA in real world applications and another on VCA deployment from an integrator’s perspective—kept returning to the need for manufacturers to tone down exaggerated claims in their marketing materials for VCA, which they said had led to over-expectation on the part of end users and a backlash against the technology. For their part, manufacturers on hand seemed to agree (with the possible exception of Iomniscient, which seemed to suggest during discussions that there was next to nothing it couldn’t do).

Bart Verhulst, managing director of the Belgian integrator Securipoint, was particularly persistent about the need for honesty in marketing and presentation of what VCA can actually achieve. Jo Stark, IBM’s global head of digital video surveillance, backed up Verhulst, suggesting that VCA needed a “thought leadership initiative” that could help shift the VCA sector towards real education and a problem solving focus and away from what he termed a “science fiction focus.” Sergio Bellano of Johnson Controls agreed on the lack of knowledge and clear information on VCA, but said it was not only the fault of one side, and that system integrators have to do more to make sure the actual capabilities of the technology are understood by prospective end users.

Standards for VCA emerged as one possible answer to battling things like bad information and exaggerated claims. The problem is that standards are lacking. ONVIF might be part of the solution, though. Daniel Elvin and Markus Wierny, who sit on ONVIF’s technical services committee (and are also with Axis and Bosch, respectively), noted that ONVIF always intended to address VCA, which is reflected in VCA’s inclusion in ONVIF’s Core Specification (vers. 1.0).

Despite the past hype and overselling, everyone seemed to agree VCA still has incredible potential. At the same time, the IMS conference made it clear that VCA is also a technology that’s hard to get your arms around. Whether it’s disseminating accurate knowledge about it, the complexities of deploying it, the difficulties of benchmarking or standardizing it, there seem to be no easy answers. It’s a technology that’s still looking for that killer application—whether on the security or business intelligence side—that can help crystallize it’s utility and ROI value. Events like this conference will hopefully help move the industry down that road.

Our newswire report with more details on Day 1 of the conference can be found here.