We live in an amazing era of computing in which almost anyone can view images and videos from around the world on their computer, all with just a few clicks. This appears simple to do, but what is really happening in the background is the power of a global "cloud" of thousands of computers working together using the Internet.
This cloud brings everyday benefits to us like email, online banking and storing our family photos. The cloud continues to grow in our personal and business lives as we move our important data and services from our local laptops and computers and out to the online cloud. Businesses have begun to utilize cloud technologies to power their surveillance for more efficient security as well as more efficient business.
There are many reasons that businesses are considering the cloud. The benefits of cloud-powered surveillance include live remote monitoring and recorded video searching from a single website, online video storage, collaborative sharing of video clips as well as centralized management and maintenance of cameras and servers. The benefits of the cloud network also propel surveillance from a tool for loss prevention and human resources into an engine for enterprise business management.
"We use our cloud-powered video surveillance solution to not only reduce shrink, theft, and improve security at our stores, but also to watch customer behavior, which helps us improve store layouts and merchandising," said Scott Hughes, of Tasti D-Lite. "In addition, we use the cloud to observe and train our employees to deliver better customer service and higher conversion rates."
If cloud-powered surveillance were simple, everyone would be doing it. The fact is that one challenge prevents rapid adoption and the good news is that it can be conquered. The main obstacle to cloud surveillance is the "B" word - bandwidth. What is bandwidth? Think of it as two pipes running from your business to the Internet. The water in the pipe is your data. One pipe is your download (how fast can you get "water" from the Internet to your business) and the other is the upload pipe (how fast you can get "water" from your business to the Internet). The bigger the pipe (bandwidth), the more water (data) you can pass through it. Video surveillance requires massive amounts of "water" to go through the upload pipe to get to the Internet. Upload bandwidth is very expensive, more expensive then download bandwidth, and it uses the same pipe as your critical PoS data, which requires a reliable, unclogged connection. Just to give you an idea of how big video is, one business with five HD cameras needs an upload speed of about 10Mbps for realtime online cloud video recording. In comparison, credit card transactions are running at a maximum of about 2.4Kbps. Video can be 4,000 times bigger than that or more!
If you are one of the lucky ones who is bandwidth blessed or has a rich uncle in the Internet connection business, then cloud-powered surveillance becomes quite a bit more simple. Surveillance cameras can be connected to your network and they can record video directly to the cloud using the Internet. The limit of this system is the limit of your bandwidth. If you are on a budget with slow connections, all hope is not lost and there are cloud-powered solutions that can work well. The simple answer to the bandwidth problem is to not jam the upload pipe full of data and to keep your bandwidth to the Internet as low as possible. This can be achieved by storing the majority of the large HD video files on a low cost server at the retail store and using the upload bandwidth in a smart way with video optimization technologies that control video delivery based on bandwidth. Limiting the upload bandwidth would also require uploading only the important "shared" files, not all of the video files, and uploading video only when needed or during off hours. Even multiple location businesses that use cost-effective and slow bandwidth can benefit from this type of cloud-powered surveillance.
"All of our businesses are connected to the Internet using a DSL connection that only offers 175Kbps upload speed. Even with insuring that our PoS transactions always go through, I am able to log into our cloud surveillance system to see what my customers and employees are doing at all of our locations from one easy-to-use website or from my iPad," said Scott Portis, CEO of Cannon Management.
Once businesses are connected with cloud-powered surveillance, the value of this new network is multiplied. The surveillance cloud creates opportunities to monitor up to thousands of businesses all from a single web interface. A surveillance system running on a high-speed global cloud like Microsoft (Skype cloud) or Google (YouTube cloud) can support instant access to live and recorded video from any camera or server, at almost any location worldwide. Cloud solutions can offer an interface that can present options such as "show all cash registers at the 97 southern Florida stores" or "show entrances at all 21 New York City stores." These views are combination views of cameras from different locations in one interface.
Using the surveillance cloud to help with employee training and store layout can drive revenue. A billion dollar retailer uses cloud-powered surveillance to help design better store layouts and merchandise placement. Using their cloud, the company's management sit at the corporate headquarters in the United States and watch customers interact with their products as far away as Europe, all in real time. They also have the capability to quickly search through recorded video, collaboratively share video clips online, and download HD video to analyze trends offline.
A common concern with having video data moving over a global cloud is security. Is cloud-powered video surveillance secure enough for you? It is for the U.S. government. The director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Army General Keith Alexander, recently said about cloud security "[cloud] architecture would seem at first glance to be vulnerable to insider threats - indeed, no system that human beings use can be made immune to abuse-but we are convinced the controls and tools that will be built into the cloud will ensure that people cannot see any data beyond what they need for their jobs and will be swiftly identified if they make unauthorized attempts to access data." Beyond the NSA, the Government Services Administration selected Gmail cloud email from Google for all of its 15,000 employees. One of the key benefits of public cloud security over local or private cloud security is the resources that large providers such as Microsoft and Google invest in security. They get the latest gear, they hire the best experts, and they proactively protect their cloud as if their reputation depends on it - because it does. Due to this investment and commitment from these large organizations, threats can be more quickly identified and addressed. It is perfect? No. If you put your video on a USB drive under your bed, its almost guaranteed to be safe, but then you can't share it to help drive your business!
Its a fact that technology continues to change rapidly. One of the key features of cloud-powered surveillance is that it can be "future proof." As new higher-resolution cameras, advanced analytics and other features are introduced, a cloud platform can upgrade as requirements change.
Even the environment benefits from cloud-powered video surveillance. Your current VMS server or DVR has a carbon footprint that is significantly larger than a cloud solution. You may not have to buy carbon credits to run your VMS server, but full-featured systems usually require power-hungry computers with fast processors. The greener solution is to save video directly to the cloud or use optimized, high-efficiency cloud-powered servers to store high- resolution video onsite as well as deliver remote cloud access and online storage as needed.
As an interesting option, some camera companies are offering cloud services which store small amounts of video in the camera itself (on SD cards) and then store the rest of the video on the cloud. If you want access to high resolution video (the trend in surveillance cameras) and do not have high bandwidth available, camera storage will limit you to the maximum size SD card (which may be only a few days) and your upload bandwidth will once again limit your cloud storage.
Although no company claims to make "hard to use" products, it's safe to say that cloud-powered surveillance solutions tend to be more easy to use because they are web-friendly. This means they are designed to work on almost any computer (Windows or Apple), in almost any web browser, without special software to be installed (such as ActiveX). Running in a web browser makes it simple for anyone from loss prevention, human resources or even marketing to log in and get the video they need. Web-based systems also reduce installation, training and maintenance costs usually required from systems that need special plugins or software.
We are entering an amazing new era of businesses video surveillance powered by the cloud, which is not only here to stay, but growing at a tremendous rate. Over the next two years, cloud-based business intelligence and analytics will grow 84 percent annually, according to a new survey from Saugatuck Technologies. With this move to cloud-based business systems, an investment in cloud surveillance will no longer be based only on benefits from loss prevention and liability management, it will naturally expand to include visual business intelligence such as customer and employee management, merchandising, store layout and financial performance. Are you ready to get onto the cloud?
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