Benchmarking of Surveillance & Security Products – Key to Market Leadership

Role of Benchmarking

Global Surveillance Camera market revenue is projected to reach $45 billion by 2019 from $15 billion in 2014, growing at a CAGR of 20% during this period, as per leading market research firms. However, the surveillance camera industry is highly fragmented with Hikvision Digital Technology Ltd. dominating the global Video Surveillance and Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) market with a share of 9.4% in 2012; followed by Axis Communications with a market share of 5.2%. Inspite of these two companies having just about 15% of global market share, they have 500+ camera variants. Similarly, Vivotek, Honeywell, Dahua Technology, Canon Inc, Bosch Security, Pelco, Panasonic also have a large number of variants, thus transforming the video surveillance market into a complex ecosystem for the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

Besides, in response to the growing demand in the last 2 decades, the video surveillance industry has undergone significant technological advances in terms of digitization, image quality & usage. Increasing demand for digital (IP) camera instead of analog, widespread usage of 4K image quality, video analytics, and integration with access control systems  have shifted the paradigm of surveillance camera and pressurized the OEMs to look at competitor products even before conceptualizing a new product. In addition, end users from different segments like Government, Industrial, Commercial, and Residential  requires unique designs and  solutions. Therefore, benchmarking of a product or an idea  for a new product is the key for OEMs to launch a successful product.

OEMs now need to understand competition offering from the point of view of

• Image quality: Resolution, Frame Rate, Back Light Compensation, Picture Overlay
• Video compression standard: H.264 codec profile, Video Bit rate, Signal to Noise Ratio
• Network: Network Storage, Alarm Trigger & Actions, Protocols, Multi-view streaming, 3G/4G Connectivity, Wi-Fi Capability
• Interfaces: On-board Storage, Reset feature, Application Programming Interface, USB, UART, RS232/485, Fiber Optics Interface
• Audio: Compression, Bit Rate, Noise Filtering, Sampling Rate
• Smart Feature Set: Behavior Analysis, Line Crossing Detection, Intrusion Detection,Video Motion Detection, Tamper Detection, Statistics, Object Removal, Region Entrance, Region Exit
• Enclosure characteristics: Vandal Proof, Approvals / Certification, IR Range, Installation aids, Operating Conditions
• Sensor integration: Smoke, Fire Detector, Hazardous Environment Oriented Sensor

Activities Undertaken during benchmarking

• Comparison and Benchmarking of different products to compare and understand two different feature sets
• Understanding the expected trajectory of technology development around the key building blocks of a security camera system such as imager, optics, memory, control systems etc and to gauge the direction in which the market will be heading in the future
• Investigate current and future technologies focusing on aspects such as possibility of obsoleteness, parts and/or development cost, expandability, easiness to integrate with third parties hardware and software
• Certification, standards and regulations both current and future ones
• Establishing the right user requirements for a ‘family’ of products in a range and then developing a “technology roadmap” that will layout the platform technology that needs to be developed over time to deliver the right family of products with minimum development effort
• Establishing a target retail price and BOM estimate for the key products or technology platforms

Benefits of benchmarking

Requirement gathering & analysis is critical before design of surveillance camera. Benchmarking is critical to requirement analysis and it enables OEMs to Define the specification for the camera and NVR along with the various variants of these products. In turn enabling common platform across multiple variants leading to cost savings. Additional savings can be realised due to the BoM analysis done during thestudy.

As compared to the above mentioned, key benefit achieved by benchmarking is study of competition products, features & pricing. This study is key to success in business strategy planning & implementation.