Denis Hebert, president and CEO of HID Global, and Luis Orbegoso, president of Lenel, warmly announced Wednesday at ISC West in Las Vegas their companies’ collaboration between HID’s Edge family of IP-based access control solutions and Lenel’s OnGuard 2008 Plus (release 6.1), into which the Edge products will be incorporated.

Calling it a “tremendous opportunity,” Orbegoso emphasized that the companies felt the industry is going towards the open standards their collaboration embraces.

 

“The customers are looking for flexibility, so it was just natural something like this would happen,” Orbegoso said.

 

Hebert said he is looking to do more alliances, conceding that the market is still “very proprietary.”

 

Edge support will allow Lenel to further expand OnGuard’s capabilities to enhance existing sites, provide contactless smart card implementations and meet the needs of users seeking pure IP-based devices as part or all of their access security system hardware platform, HID said.

 

OnGuard leverages Edge’s ability to provide fully distributed intelligence and decision making to the door, using the IT infrastructure to the maximum extent possible.

 

Using a single power-over-Ethernet connection, a door can be added to an OnGuard system installation, thus lowering the installation cost per door in terms of both materials and labor.

 

Edge devices are configured in the OnGuard software as easily as other hardware, and need no additional software or interfaces to operate, HID said. Once configured, they are treated the same as any other access control device in the system.