Of course, a scenario in which centralized storage is widely deemphasized has its detractors.
“There is going to be a lot of benefit from having more processing power in the cameras and having the capability for local storage. However, it’s very difficult to see how users will benefit from the centralized management function going away,” says Eric Fullerton, chief sales and marketing officer for Milestone Systems.
As video surveillance systems become more and more integrated with access control, building management and other systems, it is going to be a benefit to have a powerful end point, Fullerton explains. “There is going to need to be a centralized management function and storage of all of this information.”
Digitization Allows for Best of Breed Solutions
According to a recent IMS Research forecast, the network video surveillance market grew by more than 18 percent in 2009, while analog sales slipped by more than 5 percent. Various factors, not the least of which is the recovery from the global recession, are affecting the pace at which the migration to IP-based solutions is transpiring. Still, there is no argument that networked solutions meet end-user needs in new and compelling ways.
“What the digitalization of the cameras and digital video management has done is basically decouple the software from the hardware,” Fullerton says.
The significance of that “decoupling” Fullerton explains, is that it enables a best of breed solution. Now campuses can mix and match vendors when helping to design a solution.
“End users now get out from what I refer to as ‘proprietary jail.’ The old technology would lock you into that one vendor for the life of your solution,” Fullerton says. “At the end of the lifespan you would have to do a forklift upgrade, which means a write-off of most of what you bought and buying new.”
Digitalization has also ushered in the era of future-proofing.
“From hardware to software, you can download the newest revisions or the latest feature sets without having to replace an entire box or get up on a ladder and take the camera down,” says Jeff Stout, network solutions manager, Tri-Ed/Northern Video Distribution.
Innovations allow video surveillance system obsolescence – or the prevention thereof – to convince campus decision makers to go the route of digital video surveillance.
The greatly increased resolution offered by megapixel and HD cameras, as well as the HDcctv specification, is another plus. Increasingly, end users have come to expect nothing less than viewing high definition images in their personal lives. And therefore, Jones says, it’s only natural their workplace expectations for quality video surveillance will be equally demanding.
“So many people today have HD-quality televisions and they watch television in high definition,” Jones says. “These same expectations are transferring into IP video surveillance.”
Where once traditional analog video often suffered from poor quality playback on standard DVRs, now campuses are able to take advantage of HD images that offer security as well as operational benefits. HD images provide user efficiencies that were not technologically possible with standard analog video.
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Rodney Bosch is Managing Editor for SSI. He can be reached at (310) 533-2426 of [email protected].
