Eagle Eye Networks execs on the “unstoppable” rise of cloud surveillance

Eagle Eye Networks is the undisputed leader in the cloud-based video surveillance market in North America.

Having acquired, in 2017, Panasonic Cloud Management Services Europe BV, a provider of similar systems with a strong footprint in Europe, the Dean Drako-founded company is now targeting preeminence across EMEA too.

I caught up with Ken Francis, president of Eagle Eye Networks, and Rishi Lodhia, MD for the EMEA region and founder of Cameramanager, itself acquired by Panasonic in 2013, to find out more.

The pair discuss the company’s close ties with video surveillance giant Hikvision (with which it announced a partnership in June to strengthen network cyber-resilience), the benefits of HD over coax and trialling video analytics in the cloud, and why they’re so bullish in their verdict that the cloud’s benefits make its dominance all but inevitable.

Eagle Eye Networks provides a cloud-based security and operations video management system (VMS) providing both cloud and on-premise recording and a cloud video API for integrations and application development. The API uses the Eagle Eye Big Data Video Framework, with time-based data structures used for indexing, search, retrieval and analysis of the live and archived video.

IFSEC Global: Hi, both. You have quite strong integrations with Hikvision…

Ken Francis: The partnership is really across all their product lines, where applicable.

They’ve got something called TVI. It’s one of the most interesting things happening right now.

Ten years ago everyone in our industry assumed that analogue cameras were going to go away, that IP cameras were going to take over the world.

Then people started to question: why isn’t it happening all that fast? It was really about the cabling.

With analogue cameras you use coax; with IP cameras you have to rewire the whole building.

In markets where construction is expensive, getting new cable in the entire building isn’t easy to do. So a couple of companies started trying to break the code on putting HD signals over coax.

Hikvision is using the leading TVI technology – developed in Northern California, but Hikvision took it global

And there are three or four standards. It just so happens Hikvision is using the leading technology, which was developed by a company out of Northern California, but Hikvision took it global.

So baked into the Hikvision camera and recorders is the ability to talk TVI over analogue cables. It’s about 60% of the HD-over-coax market being sold every month.

So, yes there are others [doing HD over coax], but we started with the biggest one. To my knowledge, [gained from] 27 years in this industry selling globally, I don’t know of any other company doing HD over coax in the cloud. I think we’re the only one.

We’ve always had the ability to do analogue and IP at the same time – it’s just putting an encoder inside an IP box. But to do TVI plus analogue, plus IP, all in the same bridge, is a completely new thing.

Rishi Lodhia: It’s extremely interesting, especially in the UK, where you have a huge installed base of analogue cameras. So it’s disrupting that market big time.

KF: Construction costs in London are so high and you have so much analogue cabling here already. Now you can just put a different camera on the end, put the bridge online and off you go. It’s a whole new value equation.

So it will have a big impact in London.

IG: So HD over coax in the cloud is a big message. What other messages are you promoting?

KF: We just finished a big globalisation process. We opened up data centres in several new countries and now have 11 data centres around the world.

A year ago we only had six – so very big growth on that side. The one in Hong Kong is huge.

Multilingual translation too. I think we went to seven new languages in the last three months – both on the help desk and help menus.

So the globalisation has happened very fast. We’re very fortunate Dean [Drako] has had that experience – he’s not intimidated by it whatsoever.

That’s not the typical American approach in my opinion. All the American companies I’ve worked for want to bite off a new company and get a good stake before they go to a new one. Dean says “to hell to that: go to 15 and we’ll see which eight or 10 take root quicker.”

RL: He understands globalisation very well.

IG: Video analytics is a big part of your offering…

KF: So normally, 99% of the time, when a customer says “I want analytics”, if they’re really experienced, they start looking at manufacturers with analytics until they find the one they want. Then they bolt it on to their video system.

Bolt on means they have to put servers on their site, because they want to put it next to their video system. Then the end user finds the analytics manufacturer has to pay an integrator to do the bolting.

So there’s labour costs, hardware costs, maybe software costs. Trying out analytics is fairly expensive for the end user.

But because we’re cloud, we can enable people to turn on analytics for a couple of bucks a month, and turn it on just for a weekend. We bill them for three days, which is like 71 cents.

You want to count people, you already have a camera, so you log into the software and turn on camera seven to count people. On Monday you turn it off.

There is no less expensive way to try analytics than through a cloud system

There is no less expensive way to try analytics than through a cloud system. You don’t need an integrator. You don’t have to buy something. You just subscribe to it.

I believe the variance in cost between the normal way and cloud way deserves a lot of media attention – but it doesn’t get enough.

In the US market I’ve been an evangelist. The US media has run two or three articles saying that cloud-based analytics is the better way to try and buy it. I’ve not seen any of those articles in Europe yet.

IG: If the benefits are so compelling, why has the physical security industry, and media, been so slow to embrace the cloud?

KF: Because there aren’t many people offering it.

IG: And why are so few companies offering cloud surveillance?

Let’s be candid, in Europe there may be five or six companies that call themselves cloud VMS – but most are cloud managed. They’re not taking the video in a streaming state to the cloud. We’re the only ones doing that.

RL: So it’s your own infrastructure. That’s one of the other issues: if you do analytics in the cloud you do not own the cloud infrastructure. From an economic standpoint you cannot make it viable.

KF: If it’s cloud managed the only thing they take to the cloud is clips associated with the alerts. So if you want to put analytics on that system you have to get your analytics server and software, and take it out on site to where the video is.

So it’s still the old fashioned way, with all the old fashioned costs, even though it’s advertised as a cloud system.

To my knowledge we’re the only company in Europe streaming all video to the cloud

We are very unique: to my knowledge the only company in Europe streaming all video to the cloud. Because the video is in the cloud we can then analyse and do things with it without any further expense to the dealer or end user.

KF: I’m working on a white paper called ‘True cloud’. It really defines the difference between what we do and the marketing use of the word.

IG: So educating the market on these benefits and challenging misconceptions about ‘true cloud’ must be among the biggest drivers for growth?

RL: A lot of education to do.

KF: We have end users who are smart about cloud telling integrators: “I don’t want to put hardware on site, or as little as possible. I don’t want big racks of servers and hard drives in all my big buildings. It’s so laborious for my IT team. And the cybersecurity responsibilities. I’d much rather just pay someone a subscription.”

So in the US, where we’re experiencing 300% annual growth, a lot of it is driven by end-user demand. I think in Europe, we’re at the front of that. Over the next 12-18 months it’s going to pick up rapidly.

RL: The market trend is unstoppable. Every other IT segment went to the cloud. This is one of the last industries. That convergence, like analogue to IP, will happen.

KF: And we’re accelerating it.

Read Cyber Security and Cloud Video Surveillance: A white paper by Dean Drako, CEO of Eagle Eye Networks

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