After you go to enough trade shows you start to get a feel for the level of attendance on each of the show days. The first usually has the best attendance, with the second day tapering off, with the third day being a ghost time. Don’t even talk about four day shows. Day two of the ISC West 2014 Las Vegas show seemed to be an exception to the rule. Attendance was strong and the buzz palpable.

Various people we chatted with echoed the thought of the professionalism of all the booths, the level of maturity in the market (guess the ‘convergence’ has finally happened…???), and the level of integration from one product to another to deliver complete physical security solutions.

Access control and specifically biometric access control seemed to be getting a lot of attention from show goings by the numerous access control vendors exhibiting.

The other highlight would be the 4K IP-cameras that are “first” to market by a number of manufacturers. No matter who is first, that the level of video quality is getting to this level —whether real or contrived— is still compelling.

We were actually surprised not to see more merger and acquisition announcements made. The Vicon / IqInVision merger was announced before the show but you are getting the sense that more are brewing as the market becomes the maturation process of determining true market leaders.

In the meantime, Axis, Milestone, Assa Abloy continue to showcase their leadership positions with many strong competitors seeking the number 1 spot.

This accompanying photo was taken just after 3pm on the second day with aisles still full of visitors. The show closed at 5pm and trying to get out of the parking lot at that time was a bad idea.

This seems to make sense as the weekly SecurityHive.com Newsletter went in the early morning hours of day two and so many “out of office – at ISC” email notices were observed.

It will be very interesting to see how the last day of the show is tomorrow and to see everything that we missed today.