Adopting Tomorrow
Part of the IP revolution is moving from the horse and buggy
- By Keith Drummond
- Mar 01, 2017
Was it this hard to convince people to
move to an automobile from the horse
and buggy?”
It’s not hard to imagine any number
of players in the security industry asking
a similar question over the past decade or so, as they contemplated
the challenges inherent in realizing the full benefit of IP networked
technologies in the surveillance industry. For many years, the
potential of IP video surveillance played second fiddle to a far more
fundamental question from end-users: “Why should I adopt IP video
surveillance in the first place?”
Today, with that question firmly put to rest, the early IP video
revolution has become an early renaissance, with the near-unlimited
potential of the technology enabling truly great things for the surveillance
industry and the customers we serve.
Certainly, there’s no denying the past. Where many manufacturers
and industry insiders saw the real potential in then-burgeoning IP
technologies, initially slow adoption rates and lingering questions reflected
a general wariness amidst the so-called “IP video revolution”
of higher upfront costs and seemingly more complicated technical
underpinnings.
Put simply, end users were comfortable with the hardware, technologies,
and cost-structure they already knew, and oft-unfocused
messages about the cost and benefits of IP proved wanting. An industry
with no cogent answer for the “why change what works?” argument
saw real limits to the reach and potential of the IP video revolution,
consequently limiting related potential for every link in video
surveillance lifecycle, including manufacturers, consultants, systems
integrators, installers and end-users alike.
The era of across-the-board wariness and limitations is over, and
the full potential of IP video technologies is being realized like never
before in all corners of the industry. The power and functionality
enabled by IP networked surveillance solutions is in full force, as
never before, driving down total costs, and enabling the evolution of
traditional surveillance and security at a rapid pace. Even traditional
security spaces, such as mobile surveillance and guarding, are seeing
commensurate evolutionary leaps, thanks to IP technologies, and
end-users are seeing results. How far we’ve come from those early
days of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Surveillance requirements grow more complex each day, in terms
of size, scale, and the demands placed on increasingly high quality
video (including video analysis and the rise in business intelligence
applications for high quality surveillance). Further, changes in real
world security and safety consideration—including increased needs
for effective monitoring of geographically disparate sites, large and
chaotic environments, and ever more rapid incident response (particularly
by law enforcement or in homeland security situations) all
reflect the maturation and increased complication of demands placed upon video surveillance solutions. Thankfully,
a new and robust era for IP video technologies
mean an industry readily suited to
meet these demands, including planned and
unplanned future expansions and requirements,
as additional cameras, sites (even
those in other countries) can be brought
online seamlessly, available to local/on-site,
mobile, and centralized monitors with full
data integrity.
IP video provides a freedom and flexibility
to end-users, along with the full access to
the use and potential of surveillance data,
that was unheard of with analog installations,
and makes each installation—including
upgrades and expansions—more valuable
than ever to end-users, something that
holds real value for systems integrators as
well, as John Rezzonico, CEO of Virginiabased
Edge360 notes, the customer relationship
is strengthened when companies like his
can “solve a customer’s security challenge in
the best, most effective, and most efficient
way possible, particularly by maximizing
what they already have.”
Much of that value lies in the uniquely
feature rich world the IP video renaissance
has crafted for us. Even as early understanding
and adoption of IP technologies
found its footing, forward-thinking manufacturers
were innovating aggressively to
make full use of IP’s potential and deliver
breakthrough after breakthrough to the
marketplace.
Today, IP video technology, leveraging
contemporaneous advances in hardware,
compression, and storage, enables functionality—
security and business analytics, redundancy
features, fail over services, remote
and mobile monitoring, direct from camera
event notification, and many others—that
could not have existed, some not even imagined,
in traditional analog solutions, or that
take traditional features and benefits, and
push them beyond previous limits. Resulting
second and third order benefits, such as
increased business intelligence for consumers,
help further make the business case for
IP video, and drive continued demand for
further innovation from the industry.
“Video analytics are critical for us in any
remote monitoring application and it is more
efficient to have content analysis on edge,”
San Kim of the Arizona-based Surveillance
Acquisition Response Center (SARC) said.
“Analog cameras do not have the resources
or capability to have analytics on the camera
itself, which complicates the system and introduces
another potential point of failure by
using PC based VCA servers to process analytics
on analog cameras. And that’s just one
of many IP video-enabled advancements that
make the work of monitoring complex environments
easier and more efficient, something
both we and our customers benefit from.”
Benefits such as these speak to one of the
most fundamental, notable aspects of IP video
surveillance technology is how receptive
and adaptable it is to the emergence of new
technologies and industry innovation. As
SARC’s Kim observes, “the IP camera platform
is designed to evolve,” and this, in and
of itself, is a key differentiator for those selecting
IP video technologies over traditional
analog solutions. IP video solutions are dynamic
by their very nature, able to change,
grow, and adapt technologically to match
commensurate advances in technological capacity
and capability and the practical needs
of end-users.
Specifically, it’s notable that innovation
in the IP networked solutions space is not
limited to upgrades in hardware, as was
the general path of analog improvements,
but to the very capacity and capability of
IP video technology itself. Innovations in
hardware and software constantly evolve
not only the quality of surveillance (which
is important) but the very ways it such surveillance
can be used—enabling increasingly
fast and powerful analysis that drives
not only traditional safety and security, but
also rapidly emerging areas of analysis and
business intelligence.
The resources already available with IP
platforms already far surpass those possible
with analog, a fact that can only grow unencumbered
on a platform inherently designed
to provide faster adaptation paths for new and
emerging technology without significant new
investments. It’s why you’re seeing the emergence
of backward compatibility guarantees
from manufacturers like IDIS, which would
not have been possible even 10 years ago.
Finally, it is worth noting the ability IP
technologies provide to monitor the surveillance
environment more comprehensively,
no matter the conditions and requirements.
Whether in the harsh and chaotic mobile
environments faced by Edge360’s rapidly
redeployable mobile solution for crowd
monitoring and incident response, or the
complicated, multi-site real-time monitoring
requirements faced by a virtual guarding
provider such as SARC, IP video technologies
allow for the effortless remote surveillance
and monitoring of sites and/or incidents,
but for the reliable management and
monitoring of IP hardware itself, including
real-time conditions, connectivity, and more.
This ability to “monitor the monitoring”
in a comprehensive, real-time manner
means greater situational awareness for
those charged with maintenance and use of
an IP video solution, and increased potential
avoidance of uncertainty, surprises, and unnecessary
downtime amidst critical surveillance
operations.
The inherent potential of IP video technologies
has long been recognized by the
surveillance industry. But challenges in
communicating the benefits of a seemingly
more technically complicated technologies
(with potentially higher upfront costs) to a
cautious market, already comfortable with
existing, if more limited, solutions, meant a
measured start for IP networked surveillance
solutions. As we enter 2017, it is apparent
that IP video technologies have come into
their own. IP is now central to the remaking
of the market’s core ideas of what video surveillance
can and will do
to meet end user safety,
security, and business intelligence
needs.
This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of Security Today.