As ONVIF prepares to enter its 12th year of establishment, we’re reflecting on all the growth that has occurred since 2008. Originally founded by three companies, ONVIF now boasts a membership base of approximately 500 hundred companies, spread across six continents. While you might be aware of ONVIF’s mission is to provide and promote standardized interfaces for interoperability of IP-based physical security products, here are some other facts you should know:

ONVIF’s standards benefit more than just the membership
While ONVIF is a membership organization, many different constituencies ultimately benefit from its advancements. With more than 13,000 conformant products, and six profiles, users have a more flexible and simplified system design at their disposal. End users can choose to use the ONVIF interface for specific supported functionalities, while also choosing a proprietary API for other features. This is possible thanks to ONVIF’s architecture which will support both the interface and API.

Along with having the ability to pick and choose ideal products for their needs, end users will never be locked into a specific brand – offering the opportunity to future proof their system.

ONVIF offers four levels of membership
If you’ve always been interested in joining the organization, or curious about different membership levels, it’s important to know that ONVIF offers a tiered system to businesses and organizations. For the member who’s ready to go all in, ONVIF offers a full and contributing membership. With this level, members can have an active part in the development of standards, while participating in the work of the organization.

Only interested in using the network interface specification, as well as having access to specification proposals? There’s a membership for that! The user member level is open to those who’d like to take advantage of ONVIF interfaces, without participating in high-level organizational work.

If you are a systems integrator, consultant or systems designer and don’t need access to the specification or want to participate in the work of the forum, the observer membership level will allow access to the Network Interface Specifications test tools. This is an ideal way to verify conformance and test implementations of products before deploying in a customer system. Remember the only definitive list of conformant products is on onvif.org.

At the end of the day, anyone can be a member – all companies and organizations, whether you’re a manufacturer, software developer, consultant, system integrator, end user or just an interest group.

ONVIF holds two Developers’ Plugfests each year
Twice a year, ONVIF hosts an event open to engineers and developers, giving them the opportunity to test their implementations of ONVIF profiles with other ONVIF profile-conformant products. These events offer developers the chance to test their products independently for profile conformance, as well as test for interoperability between their devices and those from other manufacturers. In 2019, ONVIF hosted its milestone 20th Plugfest in Tokyo, where 22 member companies gathered for 250 hours of testing. The second Plugfest of 2019 was held in Rome in November.

Still curious about ONVIF, or interested in more information? Watch this video for more information.