Video surveillance tech holds a mixed bag of opportunities, challenges for end users
Perhaps no other segment of the physical security market has undergone such a whirlwind of change in as short a time span as video surveillance. Just a little more than a decade ago, IP cameras were still a relatively new concept in security, high-definition video was slowly making its way into the homes of consumers, and hardly anyone even knew what cloud computing was. Of course, these technologies are now a staple of the video surveillance market. There remain, however, a number of opportunities, as well as challenges, for security end users who want to get the most out of the wide variety of video solutions that are available throughout the industry today. SIW caught up with industry experts at the ASIS 2014 conference in Atlanta on Monday to get their take on the biggest trends that will affect end users moving into next year and further down the road.
Fredrik Nilsson, general manager, Axis Communications: The biggest trend moving into 2015 and beyond… can be summarized in one, four-letter word and that is ‘easy.’ There are so many technologies out there today and so few customers that can make use of all the different aspects of technology or don’t necessarily understand it because we, as vendors or integrators, don’t do a good job of telling them what to do. Everything we try to do (at Axis) – from the accessories, to the card readers, to the servers, to the (cameras) – is to make surveillance as good as it can be and integrated easily.
Thomas Cook, vice president of sales, North America, Samsung: We see a lot of activity in certain verticals. We see a lot in transportation and schools buses. It has gone away from the actual education facility. I think a lot of people have done it and they’ve move into the transportation of school children. We’re also seeing things like minimizing costs and using technology to do that, whether it is analytics or fisheye (lens) technology and having one camera instead of three or four, and so we’re seeing that. The megapixel run, as I will call it, to higher and higher resolutions, is slower to adapt. It’s there, but it costs, so when you go from 3 to 5-megapixel or up to 4K, it costs money. It’s a better picture, that’s great, but for how much cost?
Willem Ryan, senior product marketing manager, Avigilon: We believe that analytics are primed for increased adoption. We’ve already seen that with analytics because I think people are looking for that intelligence in their system and video. It’s one thing just to capture evidence and then go back and have to look at the recorded footage, but if you can actually make your system a proactive system – detecting things prior to something happening and being able to intervene – that’s where the trend of video surveillance is going. We’ve evolved from just recording onto a DVR or an NVR, and then when a crime happens going back to look at footage and saying, ‘yeah, I think I got him or maybe I didn’t,’ to actually being able to intervene and that’s a huge trend.
Yoav Stern, president and CEO, DVTel: I think one of the major trends is end users are going to find their IT departments trying to overtake their video surveillance operations and the bigger the organization, the fiercer the war. Traditional organizations with security executives, they were in charge of guards and then they were in charge of video recorders with analog cameras… but IP video is evolving to be real data. It’s broken down into colors, images, identification, analytics, and it’s compressed and moving out from the wired world into the wireless world. IT, I believe, will slowly takeover and say, ‘we’re the gatekeepers.’ Security is still a separate department within large organizations, but it has become almost like another IT department, so the question becomes: Who is going to be the stronger arm wrestler when it comes to corporate politics?
Scott Schafer, executive vice president of sales, Arecont Vision: I think it is still a resolution game right now, not that you have go beyond what we already have offered, but there are very few people that are buying into multi-megapixel today. Even though we’ve been in business for 11 years, we’re still at the early parts of the product lifecycle or the lifecycle of megapixel technology. We’re into the innovators and now we’re into the early adopters, but we’re not anywhere near the mass use of this technology yet. What’s going to have the biggest impact is moving from the standard definition IP and analog systems into high-range 1080p, 3 or 5-megapixel systems. I’d love to say panoramic technology is also going to overtake the world in a second… but I’m not sure how long mass adoption will take.
Ian Johnston, chief technology officer, Digital Watchdog: One of the things that we have to do (as an industry), just like managing bit rate and bandwidth for customers, is we also have to manage information for them. Analytics has almost been like a four-letter word for the industry for a long time; nobody makes any money off of it and it always ends up disappointing the customers. There a few reasons as to why this occurred. One is analytics are just way too aggressive and way too optimistic for what they can do. This so-called terrorism detector has never been made, nor will it ever be made, yet people are still trying to sell it. That has kind of distracted everybody and polluted the world in terms of analytics. The challenge is getting people information about what they’re seeing and providing relevant information, so one of the directions that we’re heading is actually putting applications and other things on the camera. Value is money. We’re all in this to make money and coming out with another number two pencil, which is another 1080p camera, is not going to do it.
Jason Spielfogel, director of product management, analog & accessories, Pelco: It’s kind of a tired subject that’s been around for a few years, but we’re really seeing immersive video (360-degree surveillance solutions) get its second wind. When a lot of the early providers of immersive video first came out, I think a lot of the value propositions were a little misguided. There was a lot of, ‘oh you can replace any PTZ or you can replace multiple cameras with an immersive camera,’ and I think end users were left feeling a little cold about that. Now that it has had time to mature and because most VMS systems really bring in immersive video and handle it better, end users are seeing how they can use it to create better context video in concert with their other fixed and PTZ cameras to get data and better information. There are some customers saying, ‘we’re going to move away from manned PTZs and immersive video is going to get us there,’ now that there are much higher megapixel immersive cameras that are out there, but really what they’re telling us is that they have the confidence they’re getting all of the context video for everything. Immersive video is now part of the balanced breakfast as opposed to being something where it’s a solution unto itself.
Eric Fullerton, CEO, Vicon: One of them that started a long time ago is ease of use. IP came in as this interesting technology and 10 years ago, all of the established (companies) said, ‘oh, IP is never going to make it.’ Then we had IT people that said the IT business model was going to come and eat peoples’ lunch and the market is going to be driven by IT people. I think there are two trends: One is that things are going to become easier to use and easier to integrate, but also we’re going to see that the security industry did not go away, it didn’t get consumed by the IT industry because of the knowledge that you have with security specialists. These specialists are still adding value to the end users and because security is something that not everybody is concerned with on a daily basis, there is a need for the specialists to be able to tell the end users that 'you have to put your cameras here, you have to take care of this regulation, you need to make sure that you don’t make these mistakes,' etc. There’s going to be a qualified security specialist channel at whatever level you need it, based on what kind of end user you are.
Steve Gorski, chief sales officer, Scallop Imaging: I think the biggest thing is, to be honest, the price dropping and price wars. The Chinese are coming fast and furious. Everybody’s selling the same stuff and the price is just being driven down.
