Securing profits with surveillance solutions
Demand for security surveillance solutions is witnessing manifold increase, creating several new opportunities for IT channels
By Akanksha Prasad and Priyanka Chowdhury
 The overall security surveillance market in India is pegged at Rs 1,000 crore and is growing at a robust 30 percent year-on-year and analysts forecast the market to grow to Rs 1,500 crore by 2010.
“India has emerged as the fastest growing market for security and surveillance systems. While government has emerged the largest contributor to this growth, the private sector is not far behind. Banking, IT & ITES, retail and real estate verticals have shown an ever increasing demand for surveillance solutions. Safety and security have emerged as top priority around the world post 9/11,” says Prakash Prabhu, Country Manager for the Indian subsidiary of Swedish Axis Communications, a leading vendor for security surveillance systems worldwide.
Worldwide, government is the largest spender on surveillance solutions and in India too, the trend is fast catching up. According to industry estimates, government spending on surveillance has gone up by 60 percent over the last couple of years following the train blasts in Mumbai and serial blasts in other cities.
What has aided government spending in India is also the fact that the terrorists who crashed the plane on the WTC in US were identified from images captured by CCTV cameras at the US airports. Similarly, in London too, one of the terrorists that carried out the 2005 bombings was identified from their images captured on the public surveillance system. Hence soon after the Mumbai train blasts, the suburban railway authorities wasted no time to invest in surveillance infrastructure at all key stations.
“Security is definitely the key driver for demand, but at the same time other applications of surveillance technology are driving up demand. For instance, in the retail segment, video surveillance is required to check shop lifting, monitor inventory levels, monitor sales staff for service quality and monitoring and counting of footfall for customer behavior analyses,” opines Jayesh Kotak, VP, Product Management, D-Link India.
Agrees Babu Joseph, CEO and Technical Advisor, Digital Data Communications, “Besides terrorism, the private sector is increasingly becoming aware of the threat of sabotage or theft by employees, monitoring of remote physical assets and even analyzing consumer trends. One of the emerging segment is the retail segment and by that I don’t just mean the large retail chains, but even small pubs and restaurants. The other emerging segment is real estate where large developers are deploying safety and security systems for entire residential townships and commercial parks. This is being done at the blue print level.”
Switch to IP
What promises to be a big opportunity for IT solution provider in the surveillance segment is the increasing shift from analog to IP-based solutions. Till two years back, analog surveillance systems ruled the roost in the country but in the past two years IP-based solutions have cornered 20 percent share, and by 2010, nearly 50 percent of the market would be IP based and this spells tremendous opportunity for IT channels,” believes Prabhu.
Seconds Joseph, “For the past 20 years, analog surveillance technology dominated the market. But with the spread of IP communications, the transformation from analog to IP has been stark. Analog systems are generally maintenance intensive, offer little or no remote accessibility, are notoriously difficult to integrate with other systems and also the storage and retrieval of video captured is linear. The biggest advantage of IP-based solution is that it can be remotely controlled and transmitted using internet. ”
According to Rajesh Solanki, Director, Rasan Infocom, a firm specializing in surveillance solutions, “Studies have proved that while the initial costs of IP-based equipment is still higher than analog, installations costs and maintenance costs are much lower. For instance, IP surveillance use Power over Ethernet (PoE), thus saving the cost of separate electric wiring. Its much more flexible and can be remotely managed thus allowing consolidation.”
Solanki points to another trend that is further fuelling the adoption of IP-based solutions. “In verticals like banking and IT, the physical security and information security function is managed by the chief security officer who reports into the IT head. This means that the physical security aspect needs to be integrated with the central IT,” he adds.
Joseph also adds, “Over 50 percent of the existing analog-based CCTV users are switching over to IP-based digital solutions. Customers can integrate their old analog surveillance systems with IP using hybrid cards to provide investment protection to customers having large installed base of CCTVs. A 4-port hybrid card is available for Rs 10,000 and using this device, we could monitor both CCTV and IP based cameras on the same monitor.”
Promising future for channels
The fact, that in certain sectors, physical security forms a part of the CIO’s responsibility imply that IT channels will increasingly play an important role in influencing decisions regarding what surveillance systems to invest in.
Axis Communications, for sure, thinks that IT channels will increasingly become an important channel in selling surveillance solutions. The company recently floated a program specially aimed at IT channels and plans to add and train more such solution providers. “We have been conducting roadshows to get more IT solutions providers onboard,” informs Prabhu.
He points out a recent project one of his IT partners undertook for an oil refinery. “The project included setting up of surveillance cameras across the oil pipeline of the company to prevent pilferage. This required sound expertise to prevent pilferage for deploying wired and wireless network and connectivity solution,” informs Prabhu.
Solanki recounts the various opportunities for IT providers, “Basically the complete solution consists of four major elements—hardware, storage, software and networking. It also creates complimentary demand for other security products like intrusion alarms, access control devices, fire alarms, evacuation systems, etc that can help partners expand the size of the target opportunity.”
Rasan has also developed a Network Video Management System (NVMS) that centrally manages the distributed surveillance infrastructure for customers and also helps in analyzing the surveillance data captured. “For instance, we recently did an interesting project with a retail chain where the software not only counts the total number of people entering the stores, but also analyzes the information and identifies peak hours of the store. We have deployed it at an airport as well where the software helps in automatically detects objects that haven’t moved for a certain period of time and immediately sends an alarm notice to the central system,” claims Solanki. Rasan also implemented Rs 7 lakh security solution for the famous homeopathy chain of clinics called Dr. Batra’s. Out of the 54 locations, the company has installed D-Link cameras in 18 locations of the clinics.
Jayesh Kotak also points at an interesting project D-Link is a part of. “A state government has taken on the project of deploying 500 cameras in all the prisons and police stations. These cameras will be placed at 300 different prisons state wide. While the storage devices are being provided by different vendors, we are providing the routers, IP cameras, and even the software. The software used in these cameras mainly work like motion detectors and capture even the slightest movement. The LAN networking will be a combination of both wireless and wired. So from a partner perspective the opportunities are immense,” he informs.
Conclusion
Finally, it is clear that surveillance solutions are increasingly moving to IP and this means that IP channels will have a significant role in providing integrated surveillance solutions with information security and access control solutions they presently provide. Are u ready? |