No Additional Tech Staff Required
Pearland is fortunate in that it has a state of the art redundant 1GB backbone. There are 20 servers running the Video Insight IP surveillance software. Some of the servers for the older schools are maintained at the central administration building, while the servers at the new schools – including the newest high school – are installed on site.
Pearland is in the process of upgrading all of its schools to have equivalent video surveillance coverage. Fortunately, the additional cameras don’t require additional staff to manage them system.
Like most districts, Pearland ISC has a very lean technology department. There are two telecommunication specialists who, in addition to their normal duties, share the part time role of managing the camera system.
They are also responsible for working with the district administrators and SROs to design the camera layouts for new installations. They manage all user accounts and provide end user support and training of all personnel who use the system.
Cost of Ownership Is Manageable
As with all organizations, keeping administrative personnel costs at Pearland as low as possible is essential. The implementation of Video Insight has greatly reduced the total cost of ownership for the Pearland ISD IP video surveillance systems.
Because the system is so easy to use, there are fewer requirements for additional training and support, which translates into a system that requires little in the way of ongoing support.
Training for school administrators and SROs is done on a one-on-one basis. As Gary McLeod, Pearland Telecommunications Specialist says, “training is easy because of the Video Insight system. We use the facility maps to make it easy for our users to find our cameras.”
And since the Video Insight software makes the most of limited bandwidth, storage and CPU, more cameras can be managed from fewer servers. This reduction in servers also saves Pearland on annual maintenance and operating system costs. Pearland continues to add servers and cameras, including systems for a new high school.
All these cost savings add up to produce an extremely cost effective video security for the Pearland school district.
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District at a Glance: District: Pearland Independent School District (ISD) is a large school district in a thriving suburb of Houston, Texas. The district has 22 campuses, more than 1,000 teachers and 18,000 students. Problem: Pearland was having challenges managing more than 800 IP video surveillance cameras with limited resources. Solution: Video Insight IP surveillance software Results: Reduced cost of ownership because it efficiently uses network bandwidth and CPU capacity |
Linda Richardson is director of product marketing for Video Insight. For more information on the company, visit www.video-insight.com.
