How Multitenancy Improves Efficiency of Cloud Video Management Software

According to Markets and Markets, “Video Surveillance as a Service” (VSaaS) market is expected to be valued at USD 5.93 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 22.0% between 2017 and 2022. With the gaining popularity of the VSaaS model, it is becoming more challenging for VMS service providers to precisely define the video surveillance requirements of the enterprises and cater to their specific needs simultaneously.

Every business has unique video surveillance requirements and that completely depends on its industry, business type, number of surveillance cameras required, connected devices, project sites etc. In addition, nowadays, business processes are dynamic and evolving from time to time, which requires customized VMS solutions to complement with their business processes instantly.

Therefore, VMS service providers have many options to deploy the software to their clients or tenants. To address the varied requirements of the tenants, VMS service providers can deploy VMS software with unique code-bases/source-codes for each of their clients or they can serve them all with software of generic source-codes. In both former and later cases of VMS deployment, service providers are using “single-tenant architecture based VMS software”. In single tenancy based software architecture, service providers have limited areas to offer in-service customization and upgradation. Moreover, with such a setup, it is very difficult for a VMS service provider to retain the existing clients and acquire new clients.

For a VSaaS provider, an ideal solution to provide customized and scalable VMS services to any number of clients is multi-tenant architecture based video management software.

What is Multi-tenant Software Architecture?

Multi-tenancy is the capability of a software architecture to serve multiple clients/tenants through a single instance or single version of a software, which allows them to share the same resources provided by the service provider. Multi-tenant architecture allows developers to develop the software using one source code, which can be used to serve multiple clients to increase their efficiency without compromising the security of their data.

Multitenancy allows software architecture to provide easy updates to software applications as per clients’ requests.

How Does Multi-tenant Software Architecture Benefit in VSaaS model?

Video surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) is a trending approach in cloud-based VMS services. With multi-tenant based VMS architecture, the efficiency and reach of the VSaaS become multifold. Consequently, it empowers the VMS service providers to optimize VMS infrastructure by sharing them with their clients and providing them a feasible and cost-effective surveillance solution.

Let us discuss in detail how multi-tenant architecture helps improve the efficiency of video management software:

1.   Shared VMS Infrastructure

   Through multi-tenancy, VMS service provider allows enterprises of all the sizes to share the same cloud infrastructure (management server, streaming server, playback server, cloud storage, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) etc.) and data center. Unlike single-tenant architecture, where service providers have to maintain exclusive VMS infrastructure for each client, in multi-tenant architecture based VMS, service providers have to manage only one set of VMS infrastructure for any number of clients.

2.   Easy Upgrades and Maintenance

   Upgradation and maintenance of any of the applications in VMS become very easy through multi-tenant software architecture. VMS providers do not require updating every version of their software across all servers, they just need to update the required application once in the central code-bases. Once the code-bases are updated, the changes done in the software gets reflected and available to all the clients.

3.   Easy Customization

   Every client has different video surveillance needs and requires customization in services as per their business needs. More the number of tenants means more diverse service requirements. For example, small and medium-sized enterprises may have limited need of video analytics services in VMS, while large-sized VMS projects like city surveillance may require a full suite of video analytics services. Therefore, multi-tenant architecture based VMS solutions are designed to be highly customizable as per client needs, without changing the underlying codebase which remains same for all the clients.

4.   Cost-efficient Solution

   Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) based on multi-tenancy is a cost-efficient solution for both the service providers as well as tenants/clients. Where service providers have to pool their resources in developing and marinating single version of video management software, on the other hand, VMS recipients have the flexibility to select only suitable VMS services and pay for them.

Multi-tenant architecture-based video management solutions are complex in design, but serve multiple purposes for the VSaaS providers. On the one hand, multitenancy allows VMS service providers in optimizing operational costs while managing multiple clients, on the other hand, it also reduces dependency on the software development teams. In brief, the multi-tenant architecture provides longevity to the cloud video management software.

eInfochips has in-depth expertise in providing video management software on cloud, based on the multi-tenant federated architecture which makes the VMS capable of scaling to any number of cameras, servers, and sites.

For more details, download Snapbricks VMS brochure.