Sea-Tac Airport Selects Genetec’s Omnicast For Major System Upgrade

  • Mar 31, 2010

Genetec announced recently that the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has selected and has recently completed installation of Genetec’s Omnicast IP video surveillance as part of a major video system upgrade.

With more than 30 million passengers traveling through the airport each year, Sea-Tac, a division of the Port of Seattle, was looking to upgrade its six disparate and analog-based video surveillance systems with one fully merged IP-based solution.

Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, an Indiana-based security and IT integrator, suggested Omnicast for its open-architecture so Sea-Tac could leverage existing hardware and infrastructure investments, its user-friendliness to reduce the operator learning curve, and its advanced features that have helped Sea-Tac be more pro-active, efficient and environmentally friendly.

The entire system to date consists of hundreds of existing analog cameras from vendors including Bosch, Panasonic and Pelco that are IP-enabled with encoders. Sea-Tac Airport also opted for Pivot3 Serverless Computing  storage, archiving recorded video on 11 virtual servers as well as an additional nine physical servers which support Omnicast’s directory and failover archiving.

With the ability in Omnicast to pre-set recording resolutions of all cameras, and Pivot3’s cloud computing servers, Sea-Tac quickly noticed huge storage-space savings, and a reduction in their energy consumption, which was a primary concern for senior management at the airport.

“The Port of Seattle has an initiative to be the greenest port authority in the country,” said Chris Evans, Electronic Systems Foreman with System Administrator responsibilities for the Physical Security Systems at Sea-Tac Airport. “With the Genetec-Pivot3 solution, we have been able to reduce the amount of equipment in our main equipment room by 80 percent It’s been pretty amazing”

Other features of Omnicast, such as its user-friendliness and support for virtual matrix functionality have been true advantages to Sea-Tac. Operators have warmed to the system easily and this has allowed administrators to focus on implementing more back-end processes that will streamline operations. Similarly, moving from a hardware matrix to virtual matrix allows Omnicast’s Live Viewer to drive the video wall display where operators can monitor pre-programmed event-alarms for more efficient decision-making.

The open architecture and advanced software development kit of the Omnicast system also helped Sea-Tac fully integrate the IP video surveillance system to a third-party access control solution, as well as to an internal application that provides situational awareness to key managers at the airport.

“From the integrator perspective, working with Genetec was a true partnership which offered us a full turn-key approach,” said Eric Paffenroth, branch manager at Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies. “Genetec fits very well in enterprise-type projects like these, and looking at risk analysis, we felt very comfortable going ahead with the Genetec solution at Sea-Tac.”

“Working with Ingersoll Rand and our partners on the Sea-Tac Airport project was truly a collaborative effort with long-lasting benefits for the end user,” says Danny Peleg, director of transportation market for Genetec. “I also commend Sea-Tac Airport for not only looking at the efficiency gains they can experience with Omnicast, but for truly leveraging its capabilities to be more green.”

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