PSIA hosting live demo on May 20

YARMOUTH, Maine—Recognizing that travel will be limited for most industry professionals for the coming months, the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance (PSIA) has decided to host a Virtual PLAI Experience webinar to demonstrate the value of its Physical Logical Access Interoperability (PLAI) specification.

On Wednesday, May 20, at 2:00 P.M. ET, eight PSIA partner companies in access control and biometrics will showcase a cloud-based PLAI agent connecting five PACS systems (from Johnson Controls, LenelS2, AMAG Technology, Monitor Dynamics and Siemens) and two biometric systems (Eyelock and Idemia) — all relying on a single trusted source.

The demonstration will be conducted on a webinar platform showing not only the main PLAI dashboard with products synchronizing identity data, but also each participant’s product performing after card authentication. Each product will be in a separate location, with companies in Europe and the United States included.

PSIA Executive Director David Bunzel told Security Systems News the goal of the Virtual PLAI Experience is to demonstrate how PLAI acts as a bridge between all the disparate systems out there, providing a tested specification for integration of PACS and biometric systems.

“We want to show that the technology is ready for prime time, and that customers can adopt it, as we already have a number of commercial implementations we are working on,” said Bunzel. “If you have a real tight specification and real good testing tools, compliance and interoperability is much easier to attain.”

While PSIA was planning on doing this demo in-person at ISC West, Bunzel said they didn’t want to lose any momentum with the show moving to October.

“We can clearly show the seven different locations with that identity information being transferred to the PLAI agent across to the different devices and shared and synchronized in real time,” explained Bunzel. “That is what the virtual PLAI experience is all about!”

The PLAI platform, he noted, is an API, of sorts, to write to, taking the interoperability issue out of the equation. “We often say that it helps to future-proof your system so you can do upgrades, even change your systems, easily without things breaking.”

PSIA is also working closely with systems integrators — Convergint Technologies and Tech Systems are on the PSIA board — educating them on not only the technology but on the best way to commercialize it and bring it to their customers.

“We have good relationship with them [Convergint and Tech Systems] and they are out there advocating for PLAI,” Bunzel said. “We also have a good relationship with the consultant-specifier community, and I spoke at CONSULT 2019 [hosted by SecuritySpecifiers]. We are continuing to work closely with them because we recognize that they are the ones who write it into the specs. We also have the different tools that they need to sell it.”

Bunzel pointed out that in addition to the demonstration, the webinar will have identity management experts and industry professionals on hand to answer questions, so the “educational component” is very big as well, he said.