Rebecca Spayne catches up with Security Buyer Live partner, Johan Jubbega, President of the OSSA and Senior Vice President and General Manager at Bosch Security Systems to explore the foundations of OSSA.
What is your role within the Open Security & Safety Alliance (OSSA)?
I’m president of the Open Security & Safety Alliance and have been heavily involved in OSSA since we founded the organisation in 2018. I’m a firm believer that collaborating in an open ecosystem is the way forward for our category. It’s the way to attain a true IoT experience for customers as they need data to interoperate, so cross-collaboration between for example camera systems and intelligence applications is essential. OSSA facilitates innovation on many levels, and as President it’s important to me that our group remains approachable and accessible to anyone interested in further building on this open, data-driven platform principle.
What circumstances brought about OSSA’s inception?
The security and safety industry had been fragmented for far too long. Innovators at various companies crossed paths at industry events and swapped thoughts for years about the need for platform thinking and corresponding standards. We agreed that if certain barriers were to be removed in the market, we could more easily address the problems at hand and close the gaps in our value chains. The talk was around an open platform philosophy, and founding members Bosch Building Technologies, Hanwha Techwin, Milestone Systems, Pelco and VIVOTEK Inc. set out together to pursue this quest. We formed OSSA, and since then dozens of other forward-thinking companies have joined the effort. Today, this open ecosystem is a reality.
How does OSSA seek to orchestrate the “opening up” of the security industry for all?
Well, we are close to four years into the journey at this point, and the road is paved. A lot of heavy lifting was taken on by dedicated members the first couple of years. To date we’ve developed and released to the market the OSSA Technology Stack, prescribed a corresponding, hardware-agnostic operating system (OS) for smart cameras, plus created the first three OSSA technology Specifications. These inaugural components create harmonic circumstances for third-party analytics applications to run on different brands of security cameras, while enabling existing hardware to also function within this ecosystem. For example, VIVOTEK’s IE9111-O “AI-BOX” is a “Driven by OSSA” edge computing device that allows users to upgrade their current surveillance components into an AIoT intelligent system.
This “opening up” of the industry has another vital moving part – a digital storefront to host these smart camera apps. OSSA member company Azena created the industry’s biggest online Analytics App Store where 100+ third-party apps can be offered, purchased and downloaded to cameras. Analogous to the smart phone industry: we pick and choose what to install onto our cameras, just as we are able to do the same for our phones, but in a B2B environment. Many apps feature sophisticated AI algorithms to support project-specific analytics requirements. Use cases range from object and license plate recognition to active shooter and intrusion detection, with new options being added by the industry regularly.
With the current specifications and standards available to the market, how do your member companies’ “driven by OSSA” products serve these current standards?
To complete this first major push to open up the industry, we needed camera manufacturers to embrace our philosophy and design products to run the coherent OS which is able to host these new apps. Standards from OSSA helped the manufacturers to build these products without losing product authenticity. As a result there are now more than 15 computer vision products that carry the “Driven by OSSA” seal. Camera hardware is available from Ability, Bosch, Hanwha Techwin, Topview and VIVOTEK.
As the surveillance market is constantly evolving, how has OSSA’s focus shifted to help shape the future of safety and security?
Our thinking as an industry evolves as the market evolves. Every year it’s more apparent that an open platform to facilitate interoperability is what’s necessary to flourish and succeed in the security and safety space. And really, even beyond that space because our technologies often find application in neighboring domains.
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