Vanguard Award Honorable Mention: Cloud-First Philosophy Shapes the Future of Indiana City
The people of the City of Fishers, Ind., are no strangers to change. Originally a suburb of Indianapolis just 350 citizens strong in 1963, the city has seen a near-unprecedented boom in population growth, ballooning from 7,500 citizens in 1990 to nearly 100,000 in 2019 – earning its stripes as one of Indiana’s fastest-growing cities.
Scott Fadness, the only mayor Fishers has ever had, led the charge when the town formally became a city in 2015. “Over the last several years, Fishers has experienced transformative growth and investment,” Fadness said at the time. “To build on this momentum and accelerate Fishers further into the future, I will continue to embrace innovation, seize opportunities, and lead with a bold vision for our city.”
Over the course of his mayorship, Fadness has attracted residents and businesses from all over the United States. More than 4,900 new jobs were created since he took office, alongside more than $500 million in new private investment. In 2016, Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce named the City of Fishers “Community of the Year,” and Money Magazine selected the city as its 2017 “Best Place to Live in America” – Fishers had evolved from its humble origins as a small Indiana township.
Transformative change of this magnitude, however, is never without some growing pains. No longer a quiet suburb with a handful of residents, Fishers had no choice but to shore up its security to ensure their safety. Plans to install over 250 cameras citywide came with increasing video data storage needs, maintenance, installation, and hardware costs, and stringent requirements from local and state agencies. Officials also needed a swifter way to access the higher volumes of data alongside long-term automated data archival plans.
“With our on-premises solution, we got to the point where we needed to budget roughly $100,000 a year for hardware and storage expansion and all the other related annual costs involved in maintaining and growing our storage systems,” said Tracy Gaynor, Director of Information Technology, City of Fishers.
With the city’s rapid growth encouraging investment in housing and city programs, rising security costs placed an unsustainable strain on the budget. City officials were tasked with finding a way to increase their system’s scalability and function while simultaneously freeing up the resources necessary for the enrichment of its residents. To accomplish this crucial endeavor, the city turned to Tiger Surveillance and Milestone Systems, earning the project an honorable mention in the 2024 Security Vanguard Awards from SecurityInfoWatch, Security Business, and Security Technology Executive (STE).
The Great Cloud Migration
Officials sought a way to align their new solution with the city’s “cloud-first” initiative. Data-driven video technologies paired with cloud solutions are a necessity for rapidly growing cities whose large-scale investment projects might overstep their limited budgets.
“The reality of what I call chasing the retail market for storage is not tenable, and you’re still putting all of your eggs in one basket,” said Gaynor. “We needed to get out of the hardware buying game, and a hybrid approach allowed us to meet the organization’s needs without breaking the budget.”
The creation of this hybrid solution involved the integration of Fisher’s existing video management software (VMS), Milestone XProtect, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing. The AWS cloud computing platform offers enterprises and organizations the option of video storage in the cloud instead of owning physical servers, making it an attractive option for a city strapped for the money necessary to maintain hardware.
Milestone XProtect connects a system’s surveillance hardware, including sensors and cameras, through a single interface. In 2020, Milestone Systems made the platform available through AWS, a move meant to eliminate the time spent buying and installing hardware and any associated software platforms. According to Steven Mueller, former Software Development Manager for Amazon Protective Services, the streamlining of the XProtect-AWS integration boiled the process down to about five minutes.
Implementing a Cost-Effective Solution
City officials contacted Tiger Surveillance, a software development company specializing in data management and protection for video surveillance workflows, to oversee this integration. Utilizing the Tiger Surveillance Bridge software platform plugin within XProtect, Tiger’s team was able to successfully integrate the software with AWS, creating a seamless connection between the on-premises surveillance system and cloud storage. Gaynor and his team hoped that this would result in a robust hybrid solution that could handle the city’s sizable number of freshly installed cameras and the data they’d provide at a fraction of the cost.
The new hybrid cloud video system would manage video data collected by fixed-position cameras installed inside and outside city buildings as well as general surveillance footage. While public surveillance would migrate to the new solution, however, data used expressly for criminal justice purposes – including interview room records, police body cameras and in-car cameras, and license plate recognition software – would remain on their own private networks. The integration with AWS also allowed the city to retain up to 10 days of on-site video recordings before they were archived, enabling easy retrieval alongside long-term storage.
It didn’t take long for this strategy to prove effective, especially from a cost-management standpoint. “The Tiger Surveillance Bridge software enables auto-tiering in AWS, and we simply determine our cutoff point,” said Sean Totten, Chief Security Officer, City of Fishers. “Anything past this age goes to archive. This significantly decreases capital expenses and allows us to grow and only pay for what we need.”
AWS’ tiered data storage subscriptions made operating costs significantly more predictable, emphasized Gaynor, bringing down costs associated with large-scale investments in physical, on-site storage and maintenance. “Now that we’re working with cloud storage, our monthly bill from AWS is less than 10% the annualized cost for a storage unit,” he said. “And if it increases a little bit each year, it’s tenable and predictable.”
“With Milestone XProtect video management software and its seamless integration with Tiger Surveillance Bridge, we’ve been able to dramatically decrease our capital expense and move toward a predictable operating model,” said Totten. “This innovation and cost-effectiveness are crucial in today’s climate.”
“Milestone Systems and its partnerships with Tiger Surveillance Bridge and AWS have been revolutionary for us,” Gaynor concurred. “Together, they've enabled us to deploy a scalable and cost-effective solution for our growing video needs. It's this kind of innovative thinking and technology we need to ensure the safety and security of our city.”
