The link to Access Manager will also allow companies to create more sophisticated access policies and workflow that bind physical and logical attributes. For example, Honeywell door access readers could contribute to NAC (Network Access Control) solutions by signaling to a switch to activate a network port in an office only after an employee has badged into the building or office, Amin said.

The companies will initially sell the solutions into large enterprises in regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, health care, and financial services. Federal government agencies, which are under pressure to comply with HSPD-12, are also a target. One federal agency is already testing a beta version of the integrated products, Thomas said.

While integrations between logical and physical access vendors have been possible before, FIPS and HSPD-12 have provided the market for vendors to get behind converged physical and logical access, she said.

"It really took the federal government with FIPS to put the emphasis on this," she said. Among other things, companies are uniting physical and IT security teams under one C-level executive -- either a CIO or CSO. That makes converged security sales easier to carry off, Thomas said.

But Geoff Turner, a senior analyst at Forrester, said that true convergence is still a long way away.