3 Trends Shaping the Surveillance Sector in 2015

As more IP advancements mature and strategic business partnerships come to fruition, it’s evident that the physical security industry is keeping pace with this evolution.

Here are three next-generation trends that will impact decision-makers and leave a lasting mark on the security landscape.

Growing adoption of cloud hybridisation

The desire to add new cameras to an existing system or the need to comply with security policies that mandate longer retention times for recorded video is leading many organisations to exceed anticipated storage requirements.

We therefore expect more organisations to begin taking greater advantage of the affordability of cloud-based resources, particularly for the likes of longer-term retention and archiving.

Large organisations in particular are likely early adopters of the hybrid cloud model, which allows end users to free up their on-site storage by storing as little or as much information in the cloud as necessary.

At such a large scale its often already second nature to compute the total cost of ownership. Over time the lower costs and greater flexibility of cloud storage compared to investing in additional servers will become apparent.

For dealers and resellers this move from analogue to IP and into the cloud presents both challenges and opportunities.

Those that have predominantly focused on selling on-premises security solutions will need to ensure they have the IT knowledge and skills to communicate and manage a phased migration to new technology.

Benefitting from a more stable and continuous monthly revenue stream, however, they will be in a better position to support further business expansion.

Unification and open platforms

2014 saw a continued divergence between open-platform IP security manufacturers and proprietary ‘all-in-one’ vendors. IT and security managers will undoubtedly continue to review the relative merits of these two industry models over the next 12 months.

It isn’t possible for any single company to anticipate all future technological requirements, so we anticipate that those opting for closed systems will come to regret eschewing long-term for short-term gains.

The case for open platforms will be further strengthened by the trend towards greater unification between security, communications and other business systems to drive greater business benefit. This will require a large co-operating ecosystem to provide the requisite technological diversity.

Unifying, simplifying and streamlining security is a common goal and expectation this year and next. Another opportunity is the extensibility of IP security beyond an organisation’s facilities, into parking areas with additional applications at the security center, such as in-system communications, analytics, biometric access control, mobile/wearable technology, perimeter detection alerts and more.

High performance computing as standard

The market demand for higher resolution cameras – HD, 4K Ultra HD and so on – continues to intensify and we’re simultaneously fielding end user requests to view greater numbers of high resolution video streams concurrently.

This in turn has consequences downstream from the camera, requiring much larger ‘pipes’ for larger data packets to move.

We see high performance computing as an approach to leverage and ‘load-balance’ the graphics processing unit (GPU) to decode, render and display multiple ‘tiles’ of ultra-high resolution video feeds, while relieving the CPU of the workstation to manage critical, ongoing system operations.

Pipes must be bigger, storage capacity must expand geometrically and rendering must accelerate. These are just some of the examples where vendors have to think bigger, faster and more scalable to ensure systems can accommodate for future growth.

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