Customer
The Agribank (Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) is the largest commercial bank in Vietnam in terms of capital, assets, workforce, operating network and customer base. It has 37,500 staff in 2,300 branches and transaction offices, serving 10 million households and 30,000 enterprises nationwide.
Agribank wanted to expand its video surveillance system in order to meet business growth and achieve centralised management for its surveillance networks. Agribank planned to set up a new system at its provincial headquarters in Yen Bai, while managing surveillance networks of six other locations in the province, including one branch and five offices.
Challenges:
Reliability for multiple megapixel cameras
A number of challenges were identified at the beginning of the project. The customer was concerned about the feasibility of setting up a truly end-to-end megapixel solution that went beyond simply installing megapixel cameras. With a strong technological background, Surveon’s SI partner was well aware of the impact on system performance and stability generated by the large bandwidth required by megapixel streams.
Solution scalability
In terms of solution deployment, the customer required a distributed structure with centralised management. In addition, the solution had to be scalable, enabling the customer to add cameras at individual locations or expand the coverage of the solution to include even more locations.
Professional CCTV solutions
The customer was also hoping to add advanced technologies. In their old structure, monitoring relied fully on manpower, leading to low efficiency. In addition, when events did occur within the scope of the surveillance network, the customer had to spend considerable time and effort to gather information related to the event, and it was hard to follow up on events.
True megapixel quality
As for video quality, the customer required that the solution at least supported megapixel cameras and was able to provide sufficient reliability for long-term operations. Finally, the solution had to be able to support different kinds of environments and applications (indoor and outdoor, dust- and water-resistant, etc.)
Solutions
Surveon's solution featured one Smart Megapixel Recorder (SMR) system at each of the six locations, with multiple cameras attached to this SMR. The solution included 28 IP cameras: 11 CAM4365 (3M D/N outdoor, Sony low light, fixed dome), 11 CAM4260 (D/N outdoor, fixed dome), and six CAM3260 (D/N bullet).
"As a surveillance SI, we have lots of experience in project integration in many different areas. However, for megapixel projects we are most concerned about how to integrate a comprehensive and certified solution in order to guarantee operational stability. For bank applications, we cannot accept any risks caused by uncertain factors”, said Mr. Le. “We selected Surveon’s megapixel solution as it includes cameras, megapixel recorders and VMS management software, and has been fully tested and certified.”The system used by the Agribank also comes with Surveon’s active monitoring and smart investigation technology, which supports the Agribank in terms of reaching required surveillance monitoring levels. Through the included real-time video analytics engine, all important events can be effectively displayed on the solution’s alarm board, allowing security guards to immediately follow up. For example, when a suspicious person is detected in the ATM area of the bank, the system will actively sound an alarm notifying the security guards and record the developing situation. Past events can also be quickly identified with the search function.
The SMR5000 systems offer hardware |
Benefits
Mr. Le noted, “A great concern for us when implementing megapixel solutions is storage performance and reliability. From previous experiences we have seen that even though traditional PC- or COTS-based solutions can be used in regular D1 or VGA projects, they may not be up to the task for megapixel applications. The performance stability issues caused by the overall I/Os, frame drops, etc. are real problems for SIs when providing support services for megapixel projects.”
Surveon’s megapixel RAID NVR systems have helped the customer to overcome the I/O and reliability issues often encountered in megapixel surveillance. The SMR5000 systems offer hardware RAID5 configurations to effectively distribute CPU loading while supporting up to 20-channel megapixel recording. The high-end NVR2000 systems feature advanced EonStor RAID storage with independent RAID controllers to offer even better solutions for medium- to large-sized projects.
Surveon cameras are developed and manufactured in-house, offering a complete solution from SMT to finished product assembly and providing users with end-products that operate with great stability. With firmware developed in-house, Surveon is able to control and manage any issues the IP cameras may encounter in video streaming or other issues created by the network’s complexity.
“With nearly 20 years of experience with storage systems, we have found that reliability is more important for SIs in the surveillance industry than most of other industry. If a single camera breaks down, an SI could easily spend a full day at the customer site to detect the problem and conduct necessary repairs, creating significant cost burdens for the SI”, said Elvin Hsu, Sales Manager at Surveon. “A storage or NVR malfunctioning would cause a greater maintenance issue for both SI and customer. Besides in-house developed firmware, Surveon products feature 3-year warranties, including all the components used in the products. Another aspect of our commitment to quality is our own SMT and in-house production”.
Mr. Le seconded, “Different from PC-Based NVR solutions, Surveon adopts a system design fully customised for surveillance applications. This offers higher value for SIs, including advanced levels of integration and stability.”