Cloud-Based Video Surveillance
Are serious corporations really moving their video security systems to the cloud? Or is that just hype that has spilled over from the consumer market? The answer according to Milestone Systems whose XProtect is now available on the cloud is that, while most corporate security projects are still deployed on-premises, cloud deployments are now growing at a faster rate (Source: Omdia, 2024). This trend signals a shift in priorities – and as you are reading this article, the chances are that you are responsible for deciding the priorities for a security project.
On-premises VMS (Video Management Software) typically has everything installed on the customer’s site (on either physical or virtual machines), where camera footage is stored on local recording servers and the management server is in their corporate data center. Video stays in the local area network and upgrades are done manually. Of course, there are pros and cons of this constellation, providing a high level of features and being independent of any network issues, but also requiring on-site updates and additional hardware to scale up as needs grow.
Milestone’s XProtect and Kite VSaaS on the other hand live in a cloud-hosted service (AWS and Google Cloud respectively) as opposed to an on-premises data center. This service is managed, upgraded and even monitored for performance by the VSaaS vendor. Think about the other SaaS services you know (Dropbox, Salesforce, etc.); VSaaS has that same model where you access the service over your web browser from pretty much anywhere. There are two types of VSaaS: gateway-based and camera-to-cloud. A gateway can help make the most of the cameras that are already installed by talking to the camera and the cloud. Gateways can be sized to handle several cameras, and there can be multiple gateways per site to handle larger projects.
New sites and small locations can be great candidates for a different type of VSaaS deployment model called camera-to-cloud, which takes advantage of the processing power of the camera itself with gateway software running on the device. This gives us a very clean installation with a physical camera being the only equipment needed on-site. Both gateway transmission and cam-to-cloud are available with Milestone Kite and can be used side-by-side within the same project. Various other configurations are conceivable, such as having the VMS fully in the cloud, or a cloud-managed VMS (hybrid cloud).
Cloud-based analytics can include forensic searches (people, vehicles, color), camera blur detection, camera rotation detection, people counting/occupancy status, people detection with custom regions, parked vehicle counting with custom regions and traffic heat maps. Camera-based analytics include fence guard and people count (Axis), People Count (Bosch), cross-line detection, intruder detection, loitering detection, object detection and scene change (iPro). These are available at no additional cost from Milestone’s side.
