Perhaps one of the more overused buzzwords of the last decade is “convergence.” While its origins lie in the foundational achievement of the convergence of networking and routing using a common Internet Protocol (IP), telecommunication companies and cable operators have brought this terminology mainstream to describe the passing of voice, data and digital media, such as video, over some common network infrastructure. This noble notion that convergence simply enables the passing of all types of data over a common system perhaps explains the loose and vague manner in which convergence is discussed within the security and surveillance industry. Often, people talk about convergence to represent the merger of physical security with the corporate IT network security. Others further condense the focus on the transition of surveillance video to IP networks. In short, “convergence” is ill-defined.
True convergence is more than just the coexistence of multiple media and content types on a shared network, or the migration of a technology to IP. Convergence demands that these multiple technologies are constructed as synergistic resources that are made interoperable through a prescribed communication protocol. From a software programming and integration perspective, this implies the construction of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to achieve convergence. A convergent service-oriented strategy for the security industry – a Surveillance SOA – results in the ‘emergence’ of more streamlined interoperability alongside entirely new applications that leverage existing surveillance assets for security and non-security uses.