With rising security concerns worldwide, corporate and governmental bodies have been keen to provide enhanced, proactive security for their charges, be they employees in a factory, students in a classroom, or citizens in an airport. Likewise, shipping and freight carriers have undertaken the tasks required to more completely secure the cargo carried on air, sea, rail, and land.

Integral to these measures is the enhancement of video surveillance. Video cameras, in both public and private places, are becoming more pervasive, and with the public enhanced awareness and understanding of security risks, more accepted as safeguards against further breaches of the peace. But with the expanded role and requirement for video surveillance, physical and technical limitations inherent in traditional analog or analog-to-digital (A2D) Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance systems have become apparent and are limiting the potential usefulness of video surveillance.

IP-based surveillance, like the solution produced by HP and DIVR Systems, represents as much a departure of technologies as a convergence of technologies that allows previous investments in analog or A2D video environments to be recovered and repurposed for future use.

IP surveillance breaks from the analog and A2D CCTV mold in several key respects, and the advantages of the breaks are readily apparent:

Simplified camera connectivity. Whether through an edge camera server (ECS) or through IP-enabled video cameras, standard Ethernet cable passes digital video images across an industry-standard IP network. Wireless Ethernet connections are also possible. A single Ethernet cable or wireless connection can carry both the camera output and the commands to control the pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) functions of PTZ-enabled cameras.

Discrete digital image files. Video images from a camera are aggregated and recorded, not as a continuous analog video stream, but rather a series of JPEG files, each a discrete and space-efficient digital image.

Robust and cost-effective infrastructure. IP surveillance is built on industry-standard technologies that benefit from decades of refinement and the support of a very large user base. In addition, widespread utilization of industry-standard compute, storage, and network systems has driven the initial and ongoing deployment costs of IP surveillance to levels affordable by the smallest of businesses or municipalities.

Highly scalable. Again, through the use of industry-standard and industry-leading products like the HP ProLiant server and the HP StorageWorks MSA1000 storage system, IP surveillance systems are fully upgradeable when faster processors, larger hard drives, or more efficient network technologies emerge.

Secure, redundant and highly-accessible storage. Unlike analog video stored to video tape, IP surveillance images are stored on hard drives that can safeguard the content through redundant copies [RAID - Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks] and multiple non-volatile archive options like Magneto-Optical disks. Because the digital images are not stored linearly, specific recording times can be accessed very quickly.

Full remote access and control. With proper authorization, any network-attached client with a web browser can view live images, manipulate cameras, and access recorded images, thereby eliminating the need for on or near-site personnel to manage surveillance.

Once deployed, the user of the HP / DIVR Systems IP surveillance system will have a next-generation digital solution that combines tried and true video technologies with the reliability, flexibility, and cost-savings of industry-standard compute, storage, and network systems making IP surveillance, from one or two cameras to several hundred, technically, operationally, and financially feasible.