Cisco releases portfolio of safety and security solutions enhancements

Cisco recently announced enhancements to its portfolio of safety and security solutions with video surveillance architectures and new IoT enabled solutions that ease management of millions of connected cameras and devices. The "Internet of Things" is the next technology transition where devices will allow us to sense and control the physical world by making objects smarter and connecting them through an intelligent network. Video Surveillance Manager 7 (VSM7) provides new capabilities that enable central or multiple operations management of intelligent video surveillance and an open platform for analytics and metadata.

Organisations are looking to deploy more cameras in more areas to protect citizens, customers, and employees. According to a new report published in the Markets and Markets catalogue, the video surveillance systems and services market is set to reach $36.28 billion by 2018. Organisations need secure and flexible video surveillance architecture to manage the growing number of cameras they are deploying in highly distributed harsh and industrial environments. Cisco VSM 7 adapts to evolving business needs and provides an easy way to manage video, resources, troubleshooting and business intelligence.

Intelligent video surveillance systems are increasingly being used as valuable business tools to mitigate enterprise-wide and global risk and to improve operational processes. By providing a platform where businesses can use their own operational information to improve productivity through analytics and big data, organisations can identify and respond quickly to drive operational efficiencies across different industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, oil and gas, and public safety.

Key highlights:

• Cisco VSM7 is delivering three new scalable video architectures providing flexibilities to manage millions of endpoints to meet the challenges increasing business risk.
• Cisco VSM7 also has IoT solution capabilities for business intelligence with analytics and metadata.
• Cisco IP cameras are now smart endpoints providing an application development platform. Partners participating in the Cisco Developers Network (CDN) programme can develop applications that integrate with Cisco IoT solutions.
• An ecosystem of CDN partners are now providing a range of solutions for video analytics, network monitoring, physical security information management (PSIM) and other applications.

VSM7 provides highly secure and scalable video surveillance architectures with the following capabilities:

• Federator helps organisations to centrally manage millions of IP cameras from a single user interface across globally distributed video surveillance deployments.
• Dynamic Proxy efficiently uses network bandwidth to delivers quality video to multiple users accessing the same video streams from any location.
• Enhanced medianet capabilities simplify management, operations and troubleshooting with end-to-end visualisation of video flows and on-demand Mediatrace from the camera to the video client.
• Zero Data Loss ensures that video can be preserved. In mobile environments, like transportation when network connectivity is often interrupted, cameras can store video locally until network connectivity has been restored, then automatically transmit the video to the media server.

Analytics and metadata platform:

• Cisco VSM 7 provides an analytics and metadata platform for business intelligence with the support of new IoT solution capabilities. This platform supports secure APIs for integration with third party eco-system partner analytics to record and index metadata with video.
• An industry first in Cisco VSM 7 allows motion metadata search that reduces the time and improves method to search through days of recorded video using motion detection.

IP cameras:

• Cisco IP Cameras are Smart Endpoints providing an application development platform for IP cameras that will allow new analytics capabilities to be easily added as applications are developed.
• The new Cisco 6050 Camera is a 1080p, ruggedised camera suitable for transportation vehicles such as buses and trains. The combination of high-resolution imaging and protective housing gives the Cisco 6050 the reliability required to maximise passenger safety and optimise mobile surveillance.
• Validated third party applications will allow customers to easily add functionality to the cameras such as video analytics, audio communications through cameras, IoT sensors/aggregators, and audio analytics capabilities.

Supporting Quotes:

Guido Jouret, VP and general manager, Internet of Things Group at Cisco:

"Just a year after we launched Video Surveillance Manager 7 with virtualisation and medianet, we are excited to present a major upgrade. We are bringing scalability for VSM 7 and a platform for application development. This is great example of how businesses and organisations can use the Internet of Things to gain efficiency, harness intelligence, improve operations and increase customer satisfaction."

Charles Byrd, public safety technology manager, Dallas Area Rapid Transit:

"Cisco VSM 7 and Cisco medianet enabled IP cameras give us the ability to easily use video surveillance technologies for public safety across all of our DART locations to help keep passengers safe and achieve efficient operations."

Ricardo Max, contract coordinator, Brazil Ministry of Justice: "Cisco IPICS enables us to effectively communicate and coordinate across security agencies to provide safety and support large events."

Dana Matsunaga, president and CEO, ActionPacked Networks: "The fully integrated, scalable LiveAction and Cisco Video Surveillance Manager solution bridges the gap between security personnel and the IT help desk to accelerate deployment, troubleshooting, and resolution of video surveillance performance issues, thus improving incident investigation. Furthermore, LiveAction helps IT teams simplify network readiness for new video services by enabling easy GUI-based IP SLA VO traffic generation."