According to a recent study by Transparency Market Research, the global market for Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) is expected to reach US$48 Billion by 2020. Video surveillance systems range from closed-circuit transmission videos (CCTV) to digital video recorders (DVR) and now, centrally managed IP cameras which can relay videos anywhere on the web.
Cloud-based services, in particular, are seeing a surge in adoption by users in the video surveillance industry. Indeed, there are significant benefits in moving locally recorded video data to the cloud, which can help push access to remote monitoring teams ensuring enhanced coverage, faster response time and prevention of evidence tampering.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has specified that a cloud-based video framework should have five “essential characteristics” as mentioned below:
- Self-service on demand
- Broad network access
- Resource pooling
- Elastic delivery
- Measured service
In a traditional video management system (VMS), video recording and processing, which are essential steps in any video surveillance workflow, are performed on a remote computer installed onsite., This is further archived in local machines for afterward use. All this data can be later accessed on the Cloud online.
Contrast this with Cloud-based VSaaS solutions, where the video processing and management is performed on Cloud rather than onsite computers. The data captured by cameras are directly relayed to a Cloud-based server (see attached diagram) where the secondary processing and archival is achieved. Bandwidth costs are a major concern though, in transferring high resolution videos to the cloud. Advanced VSaaS solutions offer various mechanisms to optimize incoming video for all connection speeds, such as, 1.) video data compression and 2.) setting up event-based rules on the VSaaS solution which can control the amount of data that is transferred over the network.
Further, using predefined access credentials, security administrators can tap into live camera footage directly from the Cloud, without concerning themselves with the state of onsite equipment.
Impact of Cloud in Video Surveillance
As in the case of IP cameras, the data is transferred to a centralized video management system (VMS), which is further utilized to view, playback and record the videos. In existing setups such as these, a lot of data and physical devices have to be managed together to support a high-resolution video surveillance system. There is also the need to involve various cloud computing providers for the possibility to arrange, deploy and maintain a high resource application system.
Some of the major challenges that can be resolved by moving video surveillance to the cloud are:
- Cloud-based video solutions have a natural advantage in reducing losses due to theft and damage of equipment.
- The enhanced coverage provided by cloud-based video solutions help in monitoring and tracking commercial conversion rates and preventing incidents in the first place.
- The commercial cost of deployment can be greatly reduced by minimizing hardware dependence due to richer insights generated by high quality live feed and enhanced visibility of video footage.
- High-definition videos demand more bandwidth than the consumer-oriented cloud services.
So far, we have listed the advantages of migrating video surveillance to the cloud. However, in order to achieve faster data transfer in real-time, we would require much faster bit rates and end-to-end cloud security solutions. This includes centralized system management, efficient distribution of software updates, and redundancy.
eInfochips offers a complete VMS as a SaaS offering, including a fully federated architecture, billing management & tenant management – based on a private, public or hybrid cloud architecture. This makes it extremely cost-effective and efficient for our customers to deploy state of the art end-to-end VMS systems.
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