The Opportunity To justify the spend in tough economic times, security management will be looking for increased value from a CCTV or IP video surveillance system. In many cases it may be that the cost of the systems will be met with the support of HR, IT and marketing budgets with these departments, as well as senior operational management, having the opportunity to share the valuable information captured by the cameras. This will certainly involve a ‘solutions’ approach where cameras and recording devices interact with a range of other systems such as access control, point-of- sale, intruder and fire alarm systems and building management systems. Fortunately, surveillance technology
has been able to keep pace with the changing expectations of end-users which have been partly encouraged, for example, by the realisation that the latest generation of HD cameras, with their ability to capture amazingly good quality images, can be used for so much more than just verifying what may be happening within a scene. The ability to integrate security products together from various
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technologies and to be able to offer an upgrade path from analogue to IP, are key strengths that clients will really value and there is no doubt that IT and network system integrators working in partnership with manufacturers can deliver real world benefits to allow clients to achieve maximum ROI from their security systems. The ability to do so is being enhanced by a growing number of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that offer open software specifically designed to facilitate the integration of equipment and systems from different manufacturers.
The Benefits The most obvious benefit of a network based video surveillance system is the potential to save money on cabling infrastructure. However, there are a number of other significant advantages such as the fact that a single network cable can carry video, audio and data, as well as provide telemetry and Power over Ethernet. The latter also offers substantial cost savings by removing the need for separate power supplies for each device. Hard pressed security managers can also control cameras and
monitor live or recorded images from any PC on the network, as well as on a smartphone. This offers a degree of flexibility which is not easily achievable with an analogue system. Analogue systems traditionally transmit images to a central control room, and quite often over expensive leased lines. An IP network based solution also offers a high degree of resilience allowing video to be stored at any location on the network and retrieved at any time by an authorised user. A high level of redundancy can therefore be introduced by choosing to simultaneously record and store video at multiple locations. Another key benefit of an IP network
based video surveillance system is that it allows users to gain maximum benefit from the latest generation of high resolution cameras that can deliver so much more than conventional analogue CCTV cameras which typically generate images comprising of just 0.4m pixels. For example, a 1.3 megapixel camera, depending on the field of view, can do the job of several analogue cameras as it can cover a wide area and then zoom in very close to a distant object without pixilation appearing in
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