The world of network surveillance is opening up, as increasingly people are moving on from closed circuit camera and webcams. CCTV is an analogue technology that has not been able to keep pace with an environment, which is slowly but surely moving towards IP-based network.

According to industry experts there have not been any technology advancements in CCTV applications in the past two decades, which is why customers are moving towards an environment where information can be captured on the fly and saved digitally in a compressed form for easy storage and retrieval.

A 2007 report by IMS shows that globally CCTV has been growing at the rate of10 percent globally while the network video surveillance market has been growing by 40 percent. According to a Frost and Sullivan report in 2008 surveillance comprises 30 percent of a billion dollar security industry in India. Future estimates peg this business to reach $750 million by 2012, based on industry growth.

This is probably the reason why several new technologies have come into play in network surveillance. Some of them are intelligence-based motion detection and video analytics. These trends are driven by the availability of high-end cameras with better capabilities to capture higher resolutions.

But at the same time, this has also resulted in the need to have better compression formats available so that the captured data is not very bulky in file size. This is where a universal format - H264-has been employed by some network surveillance camera makers to ensure that minimal bandwidth is used for data transmission. This standard is already used in other technologies like BluRay Disc and high definition TV as well as broadcasting solutions.

Jangoo Dalal, CEO and MD, D-Link India said, “Surve­illance is going to be a big business in the coming future. If solution providers want to set them­selves apart from the tribe, then they have to identify areas like surveillance and get themselves geared up to offer it to their customers.”

Making it work
In most cases, network surveillance is considered as a reactive technology, which is why there is a need to educate customers on applications that can be built around it which can boost productivity and also improve processes. For instance with motion detection areas, which are off limits for the larger section of the workforce can be secured and an alarm will sound out if unauthorized personnel seeks access.

“Besides this, most network surveillance solutions offer remote backup which helps during power outages as you don't need to backup the images at every camera node,” explained Prakash Prabhu, Country Manager, Axis Communications India.

One of the biggest challenges facing the leading network surveillance vendors like Axis Communications, Zicom, Sony or Panasonic etc is that customers often expect immediate returns on investment (RoI) when it comes to surveillance. What solution providers have to do is educate them that sometimes there are no RoI on human life, especially in contemporary times where security has become a critical issue in most public places. Besides this in a country like India, there is no regulatory framework, especially legal, in place on using images and video from a surveillance camera as evidence.

Also, there is a lack of open standards when it comes to surveillance. The industry is dominated by a few leading vendors who have their own standards for their products and these might not apply to those products available from another vendor's stable.

The large unorganized market is the biggest bane to this business as it comprises approximately 60 percent of the total business. Plus in current times companies might be squeamish about investing in innovative technologies. But this can be viewed more as delaying of an inevitable option than negating of the same.

Why your customers ought to go for surveillance
There are several reasons why your customers-ranging from enterprises to small and medium business (SMB)-should consider network surveillance. Given the current scenario, most companies are on the lookout for technologies, which will cut their costs. This is because with mechanical monitoring, there is minimal need of human intervention and personnel can be deployed into other activities thus saving on manpower costs.

Additionally, leveraging on an existing Ethernet bandwidth to deploy surveillance is also cost efficient. And there is no need to have backup at each of the camera nodes as the images can be remotely transmitted to a network storage device. Besides this, there is no need to undertaken additional cabling because the system will work on the existing LAN or WAN network.

Unlike staid CCTV cameras, most network surveillance cameras come with applications that make it an intelligent machine. It can be configured to have intelligent features like built in motion detection, alarm management, image enhancement or even factor intelligent algorithms like number plate recognition or people counting.

Audio can also be integrated into the video and the entire transmission can be encrypted and saved at a secure location. This ensures security and privacy of essential information. These reasons should be enough to make most customers willing to opt for network surveillance especially if they are keen on going for monitoring solutions.

And the cherry on the top for most solution providers is that this market is still nascent therefore offering a lot of scope for those you want to entrench themselves here. Those with the first mover advantage will needless to say rake in the bulk of the business as this concept gains ground.

VINITA BHATIA
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in

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