ControlByNet - Experts & Thought Leaders

Along with PowerNet, the system installed at community also includes ControlByNet’s iFlashback remote IP video surveillance Located in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the community of Flowers Crossing is situated in the town of Lawrenceville, approximately 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. This large suburban community contains almost 550 homes with multiple recreational facilities, including swimming pools, playgrounds, tennis courts, a community clubhouse, and many beautifully landscaped arbour areas. In early 2009, the Board of Directors of the Flowers Crossing Homeowners Association decided to address several issues concerning visitors (both welcome and unwelcome) to their community. The basic need for new security and tracking measures arose due to an increase in illegal trespassing and incidents of vandalism, theft, and underage drinking, as well as occasional occurrences of illegal drug use primarily from outside groups of teenagers. The community’s residents understandably desired better management of visitor access to make sure that only invited guests are welcomed into the area, while un-invited visitors are treated appropriately and illegal activities are curtailed and controlled. System consists of video surveillance and access control devices The Homeowners Association Board decided to take action with the installation of a security system consisting of both video surveillance cameras and access control devices. They chose a local security system solution provider, ControlByNet of Norcross, Georgia, to design and install a system that met a number of criteria important to the management of the community. Desired characteristics of the new system included the lack of a requirement for HOA personnel to manage and maintain the new system. Likewise it was determined that if it were possible for the new system to be hosted remotely there would be no opportunity for the new system’s server/computer to be stolen or vandalised. The potential for remote locking and unlocking of specific access areas for attendees at community hosted special events was desired as was remote “buzz-in” for guests. If additional incidents of illegal entries were to occur, the ability to remotely identify and track such events for prosecution purposes was also desired. And, as an added benefit, the Board hoped it would be possible to provide temporary access codes and/or access credentials for lifeguards and other persons who need entrance privileges to specific areas for a limited time. Ability to control key access points All of these criteria and more were met with the system installed that includes ControlByNet’s Internet Protocol-based iFlashback remote video surveillance system and the ISONAS PowerNet™ IP access control system, all integrated on a single server platform and monitored by the ControlByNet company. According to Board member Lance Graves, “The ISONAS IP-based readers have enabled us to control key access points to our community recreation areas without requiring us to store computers in the pool pump rooms.” In addition, “The remote hosted ability allows us as homeowners, board members or business owners to concentrate on the business at hand.”

Announced recently, Cloud Plus™ (Cloud+™) Surveillance Platform incorporates ControlByNet’s CLOUD video surveillance package with its onsite solution, mobile platform and enterprise guard software allowing multi-site enterprises to leverage a central web-based management console. ControlByNet showcased the new Cloud Plus Surveillance Platform in Atlanta at ASIS International 2014 from September 29-October 2 in the Georgia World Congress Center booth 2449. “As a leader in the development of cloud-based video surveillance solutions, we want to provide our customers with the best solution to fit their needs.  It is a big deal for our customers to combine our products into Cloud+, enabling them to access all live and archived video from any location directly from the browser of any mobile device without the requirement of installed apps. This avoids playing the app chasing game with all the phone and tablet providers,” said Ryan Strange, CEO of ControlByNet. “In addition, as providers of hosted video, we and our partners need control over that outgoing bandwidth.” Cloud+ combines ControlByNet’s i-flashback CLOUD, i-flashback LOCAL and ip-LookOUT to create a robust web-based management system. i-flashback CLOUD allows resellers to quickly and easily host remote video for customers, allowing them to be an instant video service provider. i-flashback LOCAL is an onsite solution that can be used as a managed server solution at the customer site. ControlByNet’s guard solution, ip-LookOUT, provides a software option that allows instant alert notification and action from any i-flashback site anywhere in the world. ControlByNet’s Cloud+ allows users to manage customers, add users and accounts across servers anywhere in the world, attach remote servers for sharing of video storage and handle any management across the organisation from a single sign-on. In addition, all live and archived video from any location is accessible directly from the browser of any mobile device without the requirement of any installed apps. ControlByNet counts many large enterprises and multi-site organisations as some of its customers. While many of them are in the Southeast, the flexibility and ease-of-use have allowed for the service to expand throughout the U.S. including one of the largest recyclers in the country.

Hosted video surveillance, or cloud video, has been utilised in small markets over the past few years and is just now really being pushed as a viable alternative to traditional onsite DVR’s.  Most of the major surveillance companies are marketing cloud products.  Some of these cloud products represent true hosted video surveillance and others are a play on word with ‘cloud access’ being the marketing ploy. True cloud or hosted video streams real-time video from the customer site directly to a safe location.  This is usually delivered to a secure cloud video provider.  The data is instantly stored safely offsite where it is nearly impossible to be compromised. According to ControlByNet CEO, Ryan Strange, there are four key obstacles to overcome for potential customers; education, ease of installation, quality of video and reliability. 1)  Education - With any new product, the consumer must go through the process of understanding how the product works, its strengths and weaknesses, benefits to the business and getting answers to key questions.  With hosted video still considered as a new market, there is a lot of miss-information out there to be battled.  It is essentially the ‘anti-DVR’ solution, so not only is the customer having to learn about video in the cloud, that customer is also having to listen to CCTV solution providers trying to convince them why it’s a bad idea.   The education process is the same for integrators that have considered offering cloud video as a solution to their customers.  Those integrators must understand the solution is not meant to take away DVR revenue, but instead, to add an additional source of recurring revenue and provide another alternative solution for their customers.  Learning about cloud video and how it can improve relations with customers and offer some safety to video is a big opportunity for today’s CCTV integrators. 2)  Ease of Setup – For end-users and integrators alike, ease of setup is a huge issue to keep the bottom line profitable with any installation job.  Moving video to the cloud may sound difficult as it invokes fears of network configuration by techs.  The ability to preconfigure cameras and do a quick install onsite is beneficial in the hosted video market.  Cameras can be port-forwarded out of the customer network or they can even be configured to automatically connect to the server with no onsite network configuration necessary.  This is a huge benefit, as the onsite requirements stay minimal without any real configuration. Transition into the cloud can be smooth and offers key benefits 3)  Quality – Expanding on the education area is a fear that hosted video may not have the quality of a DVR.  A legitimate argument can be made that you probably won’t be recording a streaming video at 5 megapixel or 30 frames per second.  But even with an onsite system you’re probably wasting resources if you are maxing out every feature.  There are very good IP cameras out there today and the cost of bandwidth is ever shrinking.  Hosted video may not be for every application (airport runway, mall parking) but who needs a picture of your lobby visitor at 3 megapixels?  The customer or integrator must keep in mind that video size impacts drive storage and most importantly the time it takes to view the video.  These things are usually thought out during the planning stages to get what the customer requires and understand all that is affected by those choices. 4) Reliability – The last area of understanding for a customer is the reliability of an offsite video system.  Most of the normal activities of customers are already done online whether it is banking, email or social media.  Video is slightly different as you want it to always be functional even when you’re not looking to utilise it.  Internet connections these days are extremely reliable.  Most are 98% uptime during the course of a year.  With the advantage of using an onboard SD card on many cameras, worrying about loss of video shouldn’t be a concern any longer. Making the move to a cloud, or hosted, video surveillance system shouldn’t bring on worries of loss of information, confusion or difficulty of setup.  For most, it’s a smooth transition and provides a release of worry the other way…..if the onsite system is working.  Hosted solutions allow instant safety of video, instant retrieval of video and no more worry about the onsite solution; it’s in someone else’s hands safe and sound.