ONVIF hosted what it termed a successful networking event at the IFSEC 2011 trade show in Birmingham, England in May. The event drew approximately 80 integrators, end users, consultants and manufacturers who attended to hear about ONVIF’s success in promoting a global standard for the interface of IP security products.

ONVIF, based in San Ramon, Calif., also released the group’s first “Application Programmers Guide” at IFSEC, a document designed to aid programmers in integrating ONVIF-conformant devices into specific applications. Designed as a companion piece to the “ONVIF Core Specification” and “Test Specifications” documents, the comprehensive Application Programmer’s Guide covers the different services included in the ONVIF specification, including discovery, setup and administration, streaming, storage and many others — and offers sample code for programmers to incorporate into their applications.

The guide is available in the White Papers section of www.onvif.org. ONVIF’s membership includes more than 300 companies; it lists 800 different conformant products available to the market.

“The industry is increasingly looking to ONVIF as the driving force for standardization in IP security products,” said Jonas Andersson, Axis Communications and chairman of ONVIF’s Steering Committee. “With the pending release of our specification for physical access control, one more major technology segment of the industry will be able to benefit from a global standard, increasing product choice and opening the markets to innovative new companies.”

The expansion of the scope to include physical access control systems is slated for release in 2011.