Hosted video for all

LAS VEGAS—Network camera manufacturer Axis Communications believes its partnership with storage giant EMC, announced April 4, will pave the way for IP cameras to penetrate the market for smaller systems.

“We think it will be the second wave of hosted IP video,” Fredrik Nilsson, Axis general manager told Security Systems News. “We've addressed large systems, now the time has come for small systems.”

IP video has always been able to compete with analog cameras on image quality, but for smaller camera-count installations—four to eight cameras—hosted IP video has usually been too expensive and too complicated to install.

“Finally, we have a solution, where the price comes down, it's scalable and it's really easy to install,” Nilsson said.

Iomega—an EMC subsidiary that specialized in data storage solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses—announced on Monday the integration of its StorCenter network storage products with the AXIS Video Hosting System (AVHS) from Axis Communications.

The new Iomega network attached storage (NAS) units have an integrated AVHS client. This means that customers can store video files locally, at HDTV or megapixel resolution. It can also simultaneously stream video data to a secure off-site storage facility developed by their hosting provider.

The cost of the Iomega units is significantly lower than a DVR, Nilsson said.

“Typically a 1 terabyte DVR costs somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000. The NAS boxes have 1 terabyte of storage and cost $250,” he explained.

Iomega has included the AVHS client on two different NAS units, one that has up to 6TB of networked storage capacity, and one with up to 12TB.

“In video storage terms, users monitoring even a busy scene can expect approximately 40 days worth of storage for four cameras recording to 4TBs of usable capacity at typical default settings (640x480, 30 percent compression, and full frame rate). To maximize storage functionality, integrators can work with end-users to set event-based recording triggers that will stream higher quality, HDTV or megapixel video to the device on motion or audio detection, for example,” according to a release.

The AVHS client on the NAS units is key to the ease of installation, Nilsson said. “The one-click software makes it very easy to install, you click on the button and the box announces itself to the hosted video systems,” he said.

In addition, the NAS box alleviates bandwidth concerns. If the bandwidth goes down, “There's always local [high resolution] storage onsite,” he said.