Historically, one of the biggest challenges in video surveillance deployments has been the ability to scale a system up or down as the need arises or as an organization grows or consolidates. While the growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings has given end users the ability to do this more easily with readily available infrastructure resources provided by cloud computing, what oftentimes gets overlooked are the various underlying command and control aspects of a solution, such as integrations with access control management and intrusion detection systems, that cannot be migrated as easily due to their proprietary architecture.
Having run up against this issue repeatedly in the field in large, enterprise-size projects, systems integrator Edge360 recently developed Surveill, a “containerized” video management solution that seeks to streamline surveillance deployments.
“One of the biggest challenges we always had as an integrator was delivering a command-and-control platform that had solid video unless we used everything from one manufacturer. It used to not be that way, but eventually it got to the point where video management systems took a back seat to everything else. Everybody is into access control, analytics, LPR, you name it – you could pick a dozen of them, and everybody focuses on providing them under one canopy, but only their flavor,” explains Surveill CEO John Rezzonico. “What we decided to do a couple of years back was, based on the fact that we could not solve the problem of good video into a command and control system – nobody seemed to have what was a true, modern enterprise solution that was able to fit within the architecture that’s out there today – so we set forth to build a video management solution that was designed to fit in the modern enterprise and modern architecture.”
While some people have asked why they would develop another “me too” offering in what is an already established VMS market, Rezzonico says the reality is that most of the industry to this point has gone after video management as a service, but Surveill has approached it from the standpoint of providing a solution that enables end users to scale on top of this more modern architecture.
A Containerized Solution
Although it may be common knowledge to those with an IT background, containerization from a systems architecture perspective is essentially the virtualization of an application or operating system. The solution enables an end user to deploy resources as necessary across the enterprise without the need to make significant configuration changes on the backend.
In the case of Surveill, Rezzonico says it is analogous to someone going to IKEA and buying a large dining room suit that comes in a small flat box and fits into the back of their car. However, rather than having to deal with the headache of numerous parts and directions to follow in order complete the assembly, most of the work has already been done for you.
“Imagine the IKEA furniture in that box, except when you get home and open the box, your entire table, chairs and everything are already configured and ready for you to sit down and just start eating,” he says. “Containerization provides basically an application-specific container where the environment is controlled, so when you build an application or you’re running an application versus installing it on a traditional server where you have to go in and set all of the standards and configure the environment for it to run in properly, the container is already configured so from applications standpoint everything you need is in that container and it is packed up and compressed. To deploy that container, you just push it forward... and then you expand the container. When the container expands, it installs everything it needs – all the application dependencies, all the database dependencies and everything the application needs within that expanded container. Not only does it do that inside that container, it gives you a complete environment that is running, again in an isolated container, on a virtual server or on a physical server.”
Though most people understand that the cloud gives you the ability to scale as necessary, Rezzonico says when it comes to deploying video management systems that many offerings still require integrators and end users to do a traditional installation.
“We are able to spin up containers and just fire them up. You just keep adding more containers, adding more services, so if you reach the maximum amount of cameras on either a virtual machine or physical machine, you can just spin up another server somewhere else and you are guaranteed that is going to be exactly the same,” Rezzonico adds.
Empowering Integrators
Rezzonico added that Surveill will be made exclusively available through integrators as they seek to change course from vendors that have drifted away from empowering their integrator partners in more recent years.
“Overall command and control solutions really depend on emerging technologies. If you are going to provide security for a large [customer] footprint somewhere, you have to anticipate that new technologies are going to come out on a regular basis,” Rezzonico says. “It got to the point that a lot of the solutions out there don’t really empower you to use third-party add-ons or any new technology. They are more designed as a holistic approach – you buy one product, and you use all of their widgets.
“Our go to market strategy is to empower our partners, to give them the product that allows them to expand and provide their customers with the technology they actually need, not the technology that is being shoehorned into them because it fits within the technology footprint of what they are trying to be sold,” he continues. “We are going back to the environment of being able to deliver a product, a foundational product around video that allows you to work with all of the other technologies that you so choose.”
Additionally, Rezzonico says they don’t require end users to deploy enterprise servers in order to have an enterprise solution.
“Every single server gets built into a node within the total global cluster and that cluster just continues to expand,” he explains. “What does that mean? Everywhere within that global cluster, if you want to talk about a global deployment, it doesn’t matter where you log on, you have the full management, full access – based on permissions – and full ability to manage your solution from anywhere. We scale all the way across one single, global cluster.”
The company has also simplified their licensing model for customers.
“You pay for a channel, so if you have 10 video cameras and you’re paying for 10 channels you can install 15 servers if you want to add as much redundancy as you want and it won’t cost you anymore,” Rezzonico says. “If you buy an enterprise level license for that one camera, you can replicate it all over the place, you can add as much storage as you want – we’re not nickel and diming customers to bolt on everything.”
Joel Griffin is the Editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
