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Video Surveillance Systems: Reality TV

The reasons to invest in new video surveillance systems are everywhere. Zoom in on these six insights to help you focus on what's important and what's just hype.

And for all the gee-whiz applications being developed for digital video surveillance, Genzyme's Kent says vendors are struggling to create something far more basic: excellent digital video management to deal with information overload. Without that, he says, he would be asking for trouble by networking a global surveillance infrastructure.

"First you've got the problem of centralized storage and retrieval of huge amounts of data," says Kent. "Then you've got small sites which have no way to do local recording and archiving, while making that data available at the home office. The question I'm asking vendors is: What does a global network video architecture look like?"

Wow tends to mess up long-term planning as well. "The lifecycle of a video system could be seven or eight years, even a decade," says Freeman. "So you better have a good rationale for everything you're doing. If you haven't thought through your investment and in six months, a new smart camera comes out that's startlingly more efficient at a reasonable price, what do you do? Do you go to the CFO and CEO and say, Our rationale has changed? You can do that. Of course, you might look stupid doing that."

After all, CEOs and CFOs "got fed up with this bad investment cycle thing before," says Bob Degen, senior vice president of corporate security for First Data, recalling the post-boom write-offs on technology. "They have a natural aversion to that kind of thing after the tech era."5 Get to the CIO Right NowYou had better hope IT has learned its lessons from that era. In fact, you had better talk to the CIO. Here are two reasons why: One, many of the new generation of video surveillance vendors are going to them, not you, to sell this stuff. "CSOs are not always driving this purchase," says Daved Levine, a surveillance systems integrator. Vendors target IT because there's more familiarity with technology, and probably more receptiveness to upgrading it too.

Two, trying to make video surveillance part of the IT network will obviously require heavy participation from IT. Says Levine, "If you try to deploy digital video surveillance without the full support of IT, you're done." Pathmark's Ramos underscores that: "Get IT involved; get them to help you build an ROI model; get them to help develop the best system for your needs."

It's not surprising then that Ramos and every other CSO we spoke with who had dabbled in upgrading their video surveillance claimed to have an excellent relationship with his or her CIO. At Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, Bowens managed the video surveillance upgrade from the IT department. "When I'm asked how I ended up in security," he says, "I say it invaded my world." In the case of the New York State Unified Court System, the team in charge of the surveillance project was Guo's, not the security officers from the Department of Public Safety (although the two groups did work closely throughout).