Mission
The IT management of the nine hotels belonging to the prestigious Hotel Invest Italiana S.p.A. Group required facility monitoring for common areas and parking lots. The underlying need was to check the hotels' strategic points and to record events that could only be monitored unobtrusively with efficient cameras featuring contemporary design to blend well with hotel furnishings.
Solution
Axis Communications was chosen by the Group's IT management as sole supplier of the over 180 network cameras installed. The video recording software was AXIS Camera Station.
Result
The client was fully satisfied with the choice made. The safety system installed guarantees protection for both assets and environments, as well as the safety of indoor and outdoor personnel, clients and visitors. Eight hotels are currently monitored, while the video surveillance system is being installed in the ninth one.
A high-end group
Hotel Invest Italiana counts on a history developed in over thirty years of business in the hotel sector, which has made it one of the landmarks for Italian hotels. Hotel Invest Italiana comprises nine hotels, ranging between 3 and 5 stars that offer over 1,700 rooms and are located in Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples. All facilities have highly refined environments, high comfort and functional rooms, advanced technological equipment, highly professional staff and ongoing adjustment to the growing demands of clients. As a service-oriented company accustomed to both having and offering high quality standards, Hotel Invest Italiana chose Axis, the world leader in network video.
A high-quality solution
For the video surveillance management of the nine hotels spread over the Italian territory Vito Di Somma, the Group's IT Director, first considered all strategic aspects, such as system design, installation, configuration and supervision and then chose a centralized management system; using an IP solution allowed for remote management, installation and, especially, system management and maintenance from the control room located in Hotel Crowne Plaza Rome-St. Peter's, thus avoiding the need to either outsource these or recruit new specialized and dedicated resources.
Over 180 Axis network cameras have been installed to protect the facilities: 150 AXIS 206 Network Cameras (of which 40 alone are at the Crowne Plaza Rome-St Peter's) are installed indoors. Besides their small form factor - they can be held in the palm of the hand - they produce clear, crisp images with CMOS progressive scan sensors and advanced signal processing technologies.
30 AXIS 211 Network Cameras have been installed outdoors: their high transmission speed, option of concurrently using Motion JPEG and MPEG-4 formats, varifocal lens, built-in PoE (Power over Ethernet) support and advanced event management options with built-in motion detection make these cameras the ideal solution for outdoor areas. The AXIS 221 Network Camera was chosen for parking areas with its IR filter that allows cameras to reproduce high-quality colour images in good lighting conditions, and black and white images at night. The software used for recording is AXIS Camera Station, which is designed to monitor, record and manage events. It also allows remote monitoring of all the other hotels from the central location in Rome.
An installation designed to stand the challenge of the future
In 2002 the Group's IT Management had already installed three AXIS 211 Network Cameras in one of the hotels: its scalability - one of this technology's strong points, was proven by the system's simple evolution, camera after camera, to cover all sensitive areas. "What counts most is that now we have a completely flexible system that can be easily strengthened to suit our future requirements. Scalability is essential when such an investment is made," Vito Di Somma, IT Director, Hotel Invest Italiana S.p.A. Group.
