How Cloud Federation Helps in Multi-Site Video Surveillance Projects

Enterprises, across different industries, with multi-site businesses require a Video Management Software, to not only secure their individual sites with on-premise VMS, but also to empower the management to simultaneously control the multiple sites from one central location. However, driving the interconnectivity between multiple sites and creating a centralized ecosystem from where all the geographically distributed business sites can be monitored and controlled is very complex and challenging.

Multi-site Video surveillance projects are highly complex and at times hybrid in nature (combination of On-premise and Cloud-based VMS). Hence, to achieve the functionality of autonomous monitoring, interconnectivity and centralized monitoring, Video Management Software needs to be incorporated into federated cloud architecture.

What is federated cloud architecture?

Cloud federation is an ecosystem of multiple standalone sites arranged in a parent-child relationship to be administered by the top-node in the system. Federated cloud architecture as a union of various cloud networks (internal or external), creates a hybrid cloud-computing environment and also allows interconnectivity and interoperability between autonomous yet connected multiple standalone sites.

In Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) network, federated cloud architecture allows individual surveillance sites with on-premise VMS systems to connect in a cluster of federated sites. This cluster of federated sites works as a large-sized VMS system in a hybrid cloud environment and allows autonomously operational VMS sites to be accessible from a central surveillance location.

How Cloud based VMS with federated architecture is beneficial for multisite businesses

Let us discuss the inherent benefits of Video Management Software based on federated cloud architecture:

• Scalability: Federated cloud architecture greatly helps in designing and implementing large-sized Video management software to support an unlimited number of cameras, management servers, and big data. Large VMS installations for multisite projects are designed in manageable surveillance clusters and federated cloud architecture helps in proper coordination between these clusters /sites, providing great scalability to the system.
• Centralized Video Surveillance: Centralized video surveillance improves the security of the connected organizational branches/sites, provides transparency and helps in enhancing the business operations. Since operations of any connected sites can be monitored from the corporate/main office, management of the enterprise can have a complete hold on the organizational activities. Federated cloud architecture provides a seamless transition to any of the surveillance site cameras or connected devices and allows video analytics events to be triggered at the local as well as at the main site.
• Independent Site Monitoring: Federated cloud VMS system also allows individual sites to have complete control of their site. For incidents triggered via video analytics to be quickly responded and resolved from the local site itself, federated VMS system provides independent control of the VMS at the local sites.
• Supports Multi-tenant VMS architecture: Multi-tenancy and cloud federation goes hand in hand for Cloud based Video management Software. While Multi-tenant Video management Software allows VMS infrastructure to be shared with multiple clients/sites simultaneously, federation helps in retaining the independent management of the individual sites. Multitenancy supports shared infrastructure and monitoring costs, easy upgrades and customization, whereas federation facilitates authorized access to complete VMS System from a single location.

• Fault Tolerance: Federated cloud architecture provides fault tolerance to the large-sized VMS system. It enables the VMS systems of the independent sites to work efficiently even in the case of network failure. Even though the central site may not be able to access the independent sites, VMS systems of these sites can record videos and secure their premises with assigned video analytics. On resuming connection with the federated architecture, data of the local sites can be transferred to the main site for analysis.

The services of federated cloud based Video Management Software can also be used in city surveillance, retail, and fleet transportation. In city surveillance, federated cloud VMS can connect hundreds of surveillance sites such as traffic signals, parking lots, tolls, public places, etc., providing complete control on the city VMS infrastructure to the officials. Similarly, in fleet transportation, it can be used to interconnect vehicles in transit with central surveillance hub for fleet management.

Cloud based VMS with federated architecture is an ideal solution for multi-site and multi-location video surveillance projects.

eInfochips’ cloud based Video Management Software, based on multi-tenant federated architecture, offers customized Video surveillance solution to record HD quality videos, manage the connected devices, and get in-depth insights of the large-sized Video surveillance projects with video analytics.