It is well known fact that when we talk about the integration of security products to form a security system there seems to be little or no standardisation between them, specifically when it comes a common set of command protocols with each manufacturer having their own proprietary method. This is especially true in the field of CCTV which is probably one of the worst offenders.

People in our industry often point to the world of IT as a shining example of how the CCTV industry should be ie, standards and product harmonisation etc.

But if you examine their history of growth you will see that the main reason they have standardisation is because the IT industry has been dominated from its birth by a small group of major companies, eg IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco. This domination, it could be argued, is a monopolisation of the market leaving the user with little or no alternative choice.

The CCTV industry on the other hand has grown up more slowly, until the explosion in the mid-nineties when the industry went into overdrive with the emergence of the Town centre market.

The CCTV industry's future was shaped more by customer requirements than technology driven. More companies were also involved in the evolvement of CCTV as an industry and for many of them CCTV was not their primary market eg Panasonic, JVC etc. All of these factors have contributed to an industry which has developed into a sea of proprietary protocols with little chance of convergence either now or in the future. But is this a bad thing ?

Some manufacturers design stand-alone products and systems which do not lend themselves to integrated systems, ie they do not consider the implications of integration at the design stage. Other companies simply do not subscribe to the "open architecture" approach.

One of the main virtues of the CCTV industry is it's innovative nature and the way it has developed products to meet customer requirements. This, ironically, may not have been the case if the industry was constrained by standards and harmonisation and depended on committees to ratify new product functionality.

So is integration doomed ?

Well, no actually. It is thriving thanks to a growing number of enlightened companies who are designing products with properly engineered interfaces and with an open architecture making it easier for those like-minded companies to integrate each others products into a CCTV system.

So what is integration?

• It is choice, choice for the consultant when specifying the best camera for a particular application, choice for the installer to design high-quality systems and choice for the end user to ensure they don't end up with a dead-end system.
• It is about being able to accommodate future technology without having to replace the entire control system.
• It is about reducing the number of keyboards and computers the user has to operate, ie providing a common user interface.
• Products with properly designed engineered interfaces and architectures to support integration will also ensure the end user can develop and expand their system over its lifetime.
• A quality integrated control system starts with its foundation, the system architecture. It can be analogue or IP based. But it must not preclude the addition of either analogue or IP products in the future.
• It should be modular
• It should be scaleable
• It should be controllable by 3rd parties
• Not only should it be designed for maximum operational performance it should be designed for ease of installation and servicing.
• It has to be capable of multiple site management.
• It needs to be able to control 3rd party cameras, domes, matrices and telemetry
• It needs to be able to integrate DVR's, NVR's, VCR's, multiplexers and any other peripheral CCTV equipment.

To help with your choice of CCTV control system you may want to investigate and ask

• Does the manufacturer have a successful track record of integration ?
• Is the integration of a bespoke nature in the product. Bespoke integration is difficult to support and will quickly become obsolete as the manufacturer introduces new products ?
• Does the manufacturer subscribe to "open architecture" and can they demonstrate how 3rd parties can control their products ?
• Does the manufacturer maintain a backward compatibility policy for legacy products ?
• Is the system capable of migrating to new technologies ? eg IP
• Should I control all my systems from a single management system ?

Typically an Integrated CCTV control system may incorporate one or more of the following:

• Access control
• Building management systems
• Fire detection systems
• Intruder alarm systems
• CCTV

Of the above, CCTV is often the dominant management system due to the fact that it is the only one used proactively by operators. The others are reactive by nature usually requiring no operator action until an event occurs.

Meyertech's philosophy is that all systems should be capable of operating independently via their own control systems in a stand-alone manner. Integration management comes in the form of exchange of information and commands. This way if one of the systems fails the others see a loss of service rather than a catastrophic loss of operation.

Meyertech has always had a "holistic" approach to CCTV system design. This is characterised by our ZoneVu CCTV Integrated Hardware products.

Over the last twelve years the ZoneVu brand has become synonymous with quality, reliability and innovation. The ZoneVu product range has also continued to evolve to meet the continuously changing requirements of CCTV control systems whilst maintaining that important holistic quality.

This point has not been lost on some of the industries leading system integrators. Take our ZoneVu Series 3 video matrix for instance which was recently chosen by the Metropolitan Police for the C3i the largest CCTV integration project to date in the UK. Chosen for its video performance, scalability, compact size and environmentally friendly power consumption the Series 3 is also at the heart of the Highways Agency recently reported National Road Telecommunications Services (NRTS) project and Transport for London's congestion charging system.

As integrated CCTV systems have become more complicated the management of them has too often depending on multiple keyboards from different manufacturers.

To alleviate this problem Meyertech developed FUSION CCTV MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE which offers the operator a single platform to efficiently manage all security system assets.

Fusion, a Windows based product, provides a suite of powerful software modules which, when combined, allow operators to navigate multiple sites and select cameras easily using context sensitive maps and icons, provide "real-time" control of system cameras and peripheral devices, assist control rooms to manage alarms more effectively through operator group assignments, provide secure access to the security system via user log-on and password identification and capture and post system video images onto a web-servers for viewing over the Internet.

A suite of powerful software modules which, chronologically audit every system event including all operator actions, automate operator logging of "incidents" electronically to a central database, allow security system managers to change workstation and system configurations off-line, ensure all of your security system assets are properly serviced and maintained through management of your service providers to provide maximum system "uptime".

The future is IP, maybe not totally, and definitely not immediate. There will be an interim step, a "HYBRID" step, a step which will allow current analogue systems to migrate to IP at the end users pace, not at a pace manufacturers dictate.

In fact this integration is already beginning to happen and will continue for another five or more years yet.

One of the reasons IP is limited in its deployment to date is technology as it is not as capable as analogue of transmitting large amounts of data.

Another reason are budgets. With an already large installed analogue base in the UK end users cannot afford to make their analogue systems obsolete overnight.

But probably the biggest issue is infrastructure: The IP networks were simply not designed for video and until they are and bandwidth improves dramatically the best IP systems will not be able to compete with their analogue brethren.

But do not be alarmed it will come and you are not disadvantaged because IP hasn't arrived in a form to replace analogue yet. There are plenty of reasons to start using IP applications which were too expensive in analogue or simply were not possible.