Diebold innovation eased by APIs

NORTH CANTON, Ohio—Systems integrator Diebold is touting its recent integration with cloud-based video provider Eagle Eye as evidence of the quick, innovative solutions it can provide its customers with its SecureStat online security management platform.

Diebold has integrated many different systems into its SecureStat platform for customers, but the integration with Eagle Eye was particularly speedy, according to Jeremy Brecher, Diebold VP Technology.

“It took weeks instead of months,” he said, because it's a “naturally born cloud solution that's 100-percent built on APIs.” There is a big difference between a product that has an API as an integration point and a product that's built on APIs and web services, he said.

In addition to faster integration, a full-feature API “allows you to innovate quicker and in combination with the modular portal you can release a new version every few weeks versus semi-annually.”

Diebold has also integrated Eagle Eye into its central station for video verification and alarm notification, he said.

How could the solution be used by Diebold customers today? Brecher gave the example of a bank that has a remote ATM with two cameras as the perfect scenario. “A DVR onsite at a remote ATM with two cameras is not the most efficient solution,” he said. A cloud solution works well with low-camera count applications such as this.

Cloud-based solutions can enable very easy access to video clips, RMR for integrators and can be attractive financially to end users because they're an operating expense as opposed to a capital expense, he said.

Importantly, cloud-based solutions are also “very mobile friendly,” Brecher said. Mobile solutions are becoming increasingly popular in security applications because of the ease of use, ubiquity of mobile devices and the ability to access your information anywhere. Cloud solutions provide a "clean, high-speed pathway for the mobile device,” he said.

Current challenges for cloud-based video solutions involve bandwidth, though that gets cheaper all the time, and expanded feature sets—which will take some time to be developed, Brecher said.

“You have to make sure the solution meets the customer's security requirements,” he said. “Each customer has standards and requirements around cloud usage and compliance � and data security. All those things have to be top of mind. If you push every camera to the cloud at high resolution, there's a tipping point where it's unruly to manage or the cost is unacceptable,” Brecher said.

However, the Eagle Eye solution, for one, allows end users the ability to store some video locally and to put some video in the cloud at different resolutions, he said.

And while bandwidth can become expensive with lots video at high resolution, what's too expensive for some is not necessarily too expensive for an end user who has a “compliance mandate to move video off premise.” If that's a requirement, the cost of bandwidth is less of an issue, he pointed out.