"This is a great step towards global interoperability," says Andreas Schneider, Sony Corporation and Chairman of ONVIF's Technical Services Committee. "We are excited to see a mix of video surveillance product manufacturers and video management software providers among the participating companies. Visitors will get a clear understanding of what a global standard will mean for the market, and how it will be possible to use products from different vendors in the same surveillance system without any costly integration work."

The implementation of the ONVIF specification in network video products goes faster than anyone could anticipate. Already today there are more than 70 ONVIF conformant products on the market, released by 11 different companies. "ONVIF provides a number of tools to make it easier for the members to launch conformant products, including a conformance process, a test specification and a test tool," says Andreas Schneider. "In addition, we arrange developer plug fests, where engineers meet to test their implementations and to discuss best practices when developing conformant products."

The plug fests are highly appreciated by the member companies. In February, engineers from 19 companies met in Germany for a total of 190 hours of testing. Among the tested products were 10 video management systems and a wide range of network cameras, video encoders and digital video recorders (DVRs). Several of these will be demonstrated at the ONVIF reception held at the Venetian in Las Vegas on March 25th.