New Video Surveillance Features Changing Business Operations

All organizations, regardless of their size or vertical, are more apt to implement a video surveillance solution in their environment. While multiple factors influence them to implement video surveillance, its continuing drop in cost may be the biggest contributor. However, the drop in cost of video surveillance is not yet so large organizations may throw caution to the wind. New factors now exist that should influence their choice of a video surveillance solution.

New Factors in Play

Video surveillance’s expanding role dictates organizations look at video surveillance solutions anew. Costs still matter but organizations want more value from their video surveillance solution. Achieving this balance between cost and functionality brings the following new factors into play that organizations should evaluate in any solution.

Factor #1: Video Management System (VMS) Software Features

VMS software records, stores, and manages incoming video from all cameras. However, as more organizations use video to perform analytics and make operational improvements, they place new demands on the software.

For instance, they expect to securely access and store all video with accountability as to who accessed and/or modified any video. They also expect to easily, and quickly, access, search, and review any video produced. Finally, they want options to capture, transmit, store, search, and retrieve video in ways these new applications require.

Factor #2: Breadth of Supported Storage Media

VMS software has always placed video on storage media, usually disk. However, organizations use more high-resolution (high res) cameras. These, in turn, capture more, high-res video and retain it for longer periods. Storing all this video on disk may become cost prohibitive in a video surveillance solution that captures and retains lots of video.

Video surveillance solutions will ideally manage disk as well as alternative, more economical media such as optical, tape, and even cloud storage.?This requires policies and features that place video on storage media in accordance with business needs.

Factor #3: Edge Video Capture at Multiple Locations

Capturing video at the edge and in multiple locations has always been part of video surveillance solutions. However, their effectiveness in providing access to videos captured at these locations and transmitting them differs significantly.

Many organizations want or need access to video captured at these locations to analyse, search, and view them. These locations also need options to automate video storage and transmission to control network and storage costs. Finally, these locations may also need economical high availability (HA) options to maintain uninterrupted video capture.

Better Video Surveillance Means Better Business

These three factors only represent a sampling of the new features that organizations should consider as they evaluate current video surveillance offerings. Organizations can and should look beyond solutions that only deliver basic video capture, storage, and archival capabilities.

Obviously, organizations still need video surveillance solutions to deliver those features. However, today’s video surveillance solutions can equip organization to better protect their environment, make better decisions, and compete more effectively. Using solutions that deliver high-speed video capture and retrieval, real-time viewing, and analytics puts organizations on a path to achieve these new objectives.