Keeping our heads (and access) in the clouds: Feenics Cloud-Based Access Control

Feenic’s cloud-based access control system offering has been around for nearly a decade, but recently has made a few innovative changes. While functionality and the foundational cloud-based solution have improved greatly, one of the most exciting advancements have been to Feenics’ licensing procurement and upgrade processes. While licensing isn’t the most exciting topic, licensing issues can cause major headaches and project setbacks if not dealt with correctly.

Feenics has solved these issues by allowing for license upgrades in real-time through the management software application, effectively allowing new licenses to be added on-demand. This improves agility, and removes the agonizing back-and-forth involved in new license delivery. This saves end-users time and makes it exponentially easier to manage the process of system and site upgrades. In terms of licensing, Feenics has been able to adopt and implement a product that other companies have not been able to implement or deploy, putting them on the cutting edge. The other exciting component of this offering is the openness of Feenics’ application programming interface (API), in that anything in the user interface is accessible and visible through the API. Other improvements include:

1. Mobile accessibility with mass notification capabilities
2. Mercury hardware operating as an IP client meaning there’s no onsite appliance, allowing full cloud support for load balancing and regional redirection
3. An intuitive and user-friendly user interface
4. Lastly, the fully cloud-based solution removes the administrative burden of updates and bug fixes.

So easy your phone can do it: Proxy Mobile Readers

Proxy is a new-to-market mobile reader technology that unlike traditional reader manufacturers, provides supply chain solutions along with their readers. Their readers feature dual-path technology that allows for either a Wiegand or secure OSDP connection to be made to your organization’s physical access control system. They also have a WiFi-based connection feature that allows for other integrations to be made directly to the reader. Say for instance you wanted to use anti-tailgating controls on your access control system. With Proxy’s system, the physical access control system would only be notified when necessary instead of controlling the response and communication between readers, making the response time markedly faster. In addition to this, Proxy is an advocate for more open integration and has API-based connections that would allow end-users to be able to function outside of the physical access control system box. This allows them to create or use the readers for other functions such as space utilization, secure authentication and many more integration options. Their offering may be new and because of that still have some kinks to be worked out, but we believe it should be on the industry’s watch list moving forward to see where Proxy takes this product.

Ain’t nothing boring about it: Boring Lab’s Milestone VMS Plug-in

The Boring Lab has developed a plug-in user interface that solves some of the complexity that comes from managing a Milestone video management system. Their user interface not only makes it easy to maintain the system, but also features a multiple query search to help narrow down to specific cameras, camera types and recorders, or a combination of these. Their data import capabilities are also something everyone can get behind. Gone are the days of performing manual configuration data entry. Boring Lab’s platform allows excel spreadsheets to be uploaded directly, saving countless hours and mitigating the risk that comes from human entry error. This plug-in also allows each camera to use a unique complex password and updates from a central interface, benefitting end-users by reducing administrative time and effort spent managing camera passwords. The only downside here is that their platform is limited to just Milestone VMS for the time being, but this platform is exciting and something we hope to see more of in the future.