CNL believes that those who have already been working with PSIM are seeing the benefits of their investment with increased revenue, increased margin as well as improved customer relationships.

Keith Bloodworth, CEO of CNL Software discusses the future of PSIM and also predicts the demise of some of the so called entry level “pseudo” PSIM vendors in 2017, as well as an increase in the entry PSIM market share taken by VMS vendors. He expects to see ongoing significant growth for Enterprise level PSIM vendors, where PSIM is a customised, mission critical solution for the client, with tailored user interfaces, workflows and standard operating procedures.

Acquisition and consolidation

The overall acquisition trend has continued throughout 2016, resulting in more major consolidation, and he believes that for the end users, it is beneficial that these leading market players are buying exciting new technologies, in turn making them more accessible through their larger distribution networks and potentially able to consolidate new products and services. 

Mixing technologies

The rise in the use of mixed technologies from multiple vendors to build an end user application, as required and defined by a client is where PSIM and other 3rd party vendors, particularly with analytics can offer huge reduction in operations, costs and time by allowing automation in event identification and process. Analytics used on their own are not a solution, but as part of a wider, more encompassing operation, can add detection and tracking as well as identify from vast amounts of video data from multiple vendors.

The mixed use of security assets to support business operations has become a new and growing development recently. Mobile phone and tablets are used to communicate to and from the control room, managing operational incidents in the field such as accidents, equipment maintenance and logistics, etc. In this way, security assets are used to support business operations and pave the way for even further investments in security technology as it is supporting the business mission.

Drones - friend or foe?

Fast emerging in the first responder community is the use of low cost drones, which can be deployed and utilised as fast and geo flexible CCTV cameras for incident management, however, the problem for many control rooms is that drones are also in the hands of the criminals, so detection and elimination will also come to the control room. "One of the major benefits here for PSIM is the ability to rapidly change and add new technologies in a fast-changing world." explains Keith Bloodworth.

Federated approach

"Users of multiple numbers of control rooms are now looking for them to be aggregated and managed from a central command facility, maintaining both local and centralised operations. CNL Software already has several very large examples" continues Bloodworth. The DHS, Armed Forces, Government and ministries are obvious areas in need of this federated approach to PSIM. "And this is an area set to grow as a specialisation in the next few years." 

Cyber security

Today, cyber security represents one of the biggest threats to security as large scale aggregations increase the threat surface. Partnerships are becoming catalysts for co-operation between cyber vendors and physical security specialist, to offer end users a complete solution. CNL Software, as founder members of the IoT Security Foundation, is working with the cyber industry to both understand and meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. "We do not, however, believe we should be a cyber vendor, just encompass the best solutions via our PSIM platform." says Keith Bloodworth.

PSIM raises its game

In 2017, Enterprise PSIM will continue to raise its game in areas that were once the reserve of defense contractors and semi military companies. Many of these applications will be at a scale that only dedicated PSIM products will perform, both defining and confirming the requirement for PSIM in verticals where security hugely impacts business efficiencies.

PSIM will oppose the industry trend and in contrast to other security systems, its greater capability and value creation will drive its growth as opposed to ever reducing prices. Will 2017 be the breakthrough year for PSIM? Perhaps not, but it will be the year that many of the global SIs start to define strategies for their participation in this growing market – both in importance and revenues.