UK City Migrates Analog Camera System To Gentec IP Platform

  • May 08, 2008

Genetec announced recently that the City of Manchester, United Kingdom, selected Omnicast 4.1 for a major system upgrade project. With approximately 700 analog cameras spread throughout the city, the City of Manchester is gradually migrating to IP, and all cameras will eventually be managed by the IP platform.

Working with C-ways Limited, a UK-based IT Integrator, the City of Manchester selected Omnicast for the flexibility and benefits offered by its new Federation feature.

“Where before we could only use either unicast or multicast functions, the Federation will allow us to use both those functionalities simultaneously, offering better management of bandwidth,” said David Walsh, technical installations manager from the City of Manchester’s Command and Control Center.

With five control centers located throughout the city to manage video from their older fixed analog systems, the Federation also has given the City of Manchester the ability to reroute all video back to one central monitoring station through IP. As each system is progressively migrated and rerouted back to the central monitoring station, there will no longer be a need for the other control centers, thus contributing to significantly reduced operation costs.

Additionally, total flexibility of the system has given them the freedom to work with their existing infrastructure and any hardware providers they deem fit. According to Walsh “this is very important when spending public money.”

One month into the implementation of the Omnicast system, the City of Manchester has already migrated 30 cameras from the Greater Manchester Police and 20 cameras from the city’s largest municipal park over to the Omnicast platform.

“Unlike an analog installation, the systems were up and running within hours and our partners could not be happier with the new system and its many benefits,” Walsh said.

Although in initial installation stages, the City of Manchester has plans to continue populating the Omnicast platform with existing cameras and is also looking into third-party integration with video and audio analytics partners.

Featured

  • Report: 47 Percent of Security Service Providers Are Not Yet Using AI or Automation Tools

    Trackforce, a provider of security workforce management platforms, today announced the launch of its 2025 Physical Security Operations Benchmark Report, an industry-first study that benchmarks both private security service providers and corporate security teams side by side. Based on a survey of over 300 security professionals across the globe, the report provides a comprehensive look at the state of physical security operations. Read Now

    • Guard Services

  • Identity Governance at the Crossroads of Complexity and Scale

    Modern enterprises are grappling with an increasing number of identities, both human and machine, across an ever-growing number of systems. They must also deal with increased operational demands, including faster onboarding, more scalable models, and tighter security enforcement. Navigating these ever-growing challenges with speed and accuracy requires a new approach to identity governance that is built for the future enterprise. Read Now

  • Eagle Eye Networks Launches AI Camera Gun Detection

    Eagle Eye Networks, a provider of cloud video surveillance, recently introduced Eagle Eye Gun Detection, a new layer of protection for schools and businesses that works with existing security cameras and infrastructure. Eagle Eye Networks is the first to build gun detection into its platform. Read Now

  • Report: AI is Supercharging Old-School Cybercriminal Tactics

    AI isn’t just transforming how we work. It’s reshaping how cybercriminals attack, with threat actors exploiting AI to mass produce malicious code loaders, steal browser credentials and accelerate cloud attacks, according to a new report from Elastic. Read Now

  • Pragmatism, Productivity, and the Push for Accountability in 2025-2026

    Every year, the security industry debates whether artificial intelligence is a disruption, an enabler, or a distraction. By 2025, that conversation matured, where AI became a working dimension in physical identity and access management (PIAM) programs. Observations from 2025 highlight this turning point in AI’s role in access control and define how security leaders are being distinguished based on how they apply it. Read Now

Most   Popular

New Products

  • Camden CV-7600 High Security Card Readers

    Camden CV-7600 High Security Card Readers

    Camden Door Controls has relaunched its CV-7600 card readers in response to growing market demand for a more secure alternative to standard proximity credentials that can be easily cloned. CV-7600 readers support MIFARE DESFire EV1 & EV2 encryption technology credentials, making them virtually clone-proof and highly secure.

  • Luma x20

    Luma x20

    Snap One has announced its popular Luma x20 family of surveillance products now offers even greater security and privacy for home and business owners across the globe by giving them full control over integrators’ system access to view live and recorded video. According to Snap One Product Manager Derek Webb, the new “customer handoff” feature provides enhanced user control after initial installation, allowing the owners to have total privacy while also making it easy to reinstate integrator access when maintenance or assistance is required. This new feature is now available to all Luma x20 users globally. “The Luma x20 family of surveillance solutions provides excellent image and audio capture, and with the new customer handoff feature, it now offers absolute privacy for camera feeds and recordings,” Webb said. “With notifications and integrator access controlled through the powerful OvrC remote system management platform, it’s easy for integrators to give their clients full control of their footage and then to get temporary access from the client for any troubleshooting needs.”

  • QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    The latest Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform offers next-generation smart camera IoT solutions to improve safety and security across enterprises, cities and spaces. The Vision Intelligence Platform was expanded in March 2022 with the introduction of the QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC), which delivers superior artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing at the edge.