By Tim Ross

From the cost of physical components like cameras, video management systems, and storage, to service, downtime and replacement costs, surveillance systems are a continual drain on a security manager’s budget. The ideal system effectively addresses all of these costs, from fraud and theft to daily operations, providing a system that both costs less and is more effective in preventing loss.  The total cost of ownership associated with a surveillance system can be broken down into three main value areas for security managers -- physical costs, operational costs, and investigative effectiveness.

Physical Costs

Surveillance systems will likely always require cameras, video management systems, and storage.  There are few ways to get around this simple fact, but security managers can look at optimizing their purchases of these components to ensure that they get the most valuable possible.  Systems that support converged camera installations are a good place to start -- why spend the money to replace your analogue cameras just because you want to try out IP cameras in one area?

Channel expansion provides another effective way to cut physical equipment costs.  If a bank or retailer wants to add a 17th camera, with many systems they need to purchase a whole separate system just for that one camera.  Channel expansion enables the addition of up to sixteen additional cameras depending on the system configuration.  For those with thirty-two cameras, some companies are now offering 32-channel systems that eliminate the need for a second 16-channel box and bring a meaningful reduction in the cost of the surveillance system.

Virtualization technology, which has been a buzz word in the tech world for a couple of years is now making its way into the security world via camera virtualization.   Virtualization essentially allows users to take one machine (in the tech world it’s usually a server, and in security it’s a megapixel camera) and “virtually” divide it into several.  In a security application, this means that one megapixel camera could be set up to monitor four areas, but the data feeds from those areas would be kept separate and distinct as if they were coming from four different cameras.  Four cameras for the price of one will eventually deliver a massive price cut on cameras for security managers.

Most organizations, security included, have to make a quantity Vs. quality decision when it comes to storage.  Traditionally DVRs have handled the storage issue by arbitrarily “running” frames of video and degrading quality until the video eventually disappears from the system (usually after about thirty days).  Now, companies are looking at better ways to tailor storage to the needs of the security industry.  New systems allow users to choose which key frames they want to keep and for how long, and which frames can be discarded.  This enables investigators to search through up to years’s worth of key events without security managers having to buy extra hard drives for storage.

Operational Costs

Once a surveillance system is installed, it can be effective in preventing loss, but it also continues to generate costs.  Hard drive failures, if left undetected, can cause dangerous downtime and result in expensive emergency service calls.  And sometimes, even setting up a system can be costly and time-consuming, especially if a system administrator has to manually go to each video management system within a network to set system requirements, users, roles, and permissions.  Surveillance systems have recently progressed to the point where these costs are as minimal as possible.  Real-time component health alerts notify managers and service organizations if a hard drive is predicted to fail, a camera has gone off line, or even if data has not been received in a specified amount of time.  And enterprise management platforms enable system administrators to configure large networks centrally, and set user permissions across an enterprise to enable single sign-on.