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Russian PSIM Market Trends, Drivers and Forecasts
June 2019 by All-over-IP
Most businesses in Russia have physical security systems installed. But those often represent multiple unconnected applications and devices that don’t communicate with each other which provides poor situational awareness and slows down response time. From the legislative perspective, all is fine as security systems have been deployed. But from the efficiency perspective, the human factor and the time of response remain a challenge. That is why a growing number of security managers in Russia is currently looking for ways to improve their investment performance instead of purchasing new hardware. Andrey Skvortsov, Director Business Development for Electronika (a leading Russian PSIM software platform manufacturer and a sponsor of All-over-IP 2019) has come up with his vision for the future of physical security in a digital economy.
What will further drive PSIM sales in Russia and how will the local physical security business evolve?
Russian vertical laws such as regulations for oil and gas businesses or transportation only require of critical infrastructure to deploy SCADA types of systems. Although, there are no specific requirements to SCADA except from a general requirement to integrate silos. So, basically, it’s the end-user who gets to chose between integration platforms (be it PSIM or SCADA). The major factors that will drive the PSIM market in the next few years in Russia include the increasing demand for enhanced situational awareness and response; the evolving role of security managers beyond traditional security function to where business and operation management function sits; the increasing pool of technology available on the market and the need to integrate new technology in established organizations; growing complexity of security solutions generally and the demand for having a more simple approach to security infrastructure management through seamless integration.
The trend associated with improving operational efficiencies with the deployment of PSIM technology will drive further convergence of market segments, a massive arrival of IT companies to the physical security market and, vice versa, the expansion of security companies to the IT industry. Contract pricing for physical security installations is expected to go up due to additional value delivered beyond security. In 2019, the Russian market for physical security will definitely show growth around 10–20% compared to the year 2018.
What is a typical case for a PSIM scenario?
Customers come to us when security technology has been deployed, money has been spent, but the system does not really work, meaning security operators cannot manage it properly. They sit watching multiple alerts popping up every minute, not knowing what to do. That is the case for PSIM software to enter the arena.
Any physical security installation should normally start with describing response scenarios (after security threat and violator models have been classified, certainly) and chosing a PSIM platform. Only after it makes sense to go over to shaping requirements and deciding on the rest of the infrastructure.
How do digital economy and Industry 4.0 transform the PSIM market?
Industry 4.0 mostly creates what has been called a "smart factory". Still, a few trends that are taking over Industry 4.0 are expected to drive physical security business in Russia.
1. The Internet of Things and edge computing. Intelligent functionality is being increasingly moved out of servers to edge devices including video surveillance cameras with on-board analytics, smart access control readers, etc. Today’s IoT initiatives have adopted distributed computing concepts to enable security installations with no limits to scale options.
2. Big Data. Peripheral security devices and other sensors generate a huge amount of events that are just impossible to be analyzed by a human being. Advanced real-time analytics can process streaming events in an efficient and quick way, and provide the security operator with information that is really significant for a specific case or incident.
3. Artificial intelligence (AI). Basic elements of AI are being deployed across security applications in Russia, but it’s mainly relevant to video surveillance analytics based on optimally tuned neural networks as part of AI. I believe in about five years we will see AI-driven situational awareness centres that enable automated response to security alerts.
4. As as service models of business. So far, those are mostly launched for smart city applications such as hosted video surveillance with public and police access to valuable data. The commercial sector represents a future growth opportunity.
