In the good old days, if you were a VMS vendor, you’d offer 2 things : a little database engine, and a client to view video (live and recorded). In return, the camera guys would fret over sensor sizes and optics, but not worry about how video was stored and retrieved.
The core competency of the VMS guys was writing code that ran on a PC, while the camera guys would get their code to run on a small embedded platform.
What we are seeing now is that the lines are getting blurry. Milestone offers code that the camera guys can embed in their systems, and the camera guys now offer small databases embedded directly in the cameras, and obviously there’s a client to view the video too.
From an architectural point of view, the advances in camera hardware capabilities open up for a whole host of interesting configurations. In a sense, the cameras are participating in a giant BYOB party, only, instead of beer, the cameras bring processing power and storage. Prior, the host would have to buy more “beer” (storage and processing), as more “guests” (cameras) arrived. Now, if host has enough physical room (switches and power).
Cameras now have a sufficiently high level of sophistication that they can act almost completely autonomously. While my private setup does require a regular server and storage – somewhere – the camera pretty much cares for itself. It does motion detection, and decides on its own when to store footage. When it does store something, it notifies me that it did, and I can check it out from anywhere in the world. The amount of processing needed on the PC is miniscule.
So how do NVR appliances fit in?
A few years ago, the difference between a regular PC and an “appliance” was that the appliance came with Windows XP Embedded. That was pretty much it. The Hardware and software was almost 100% identical to the traditional PC platform, but the cost was usually substantially higher (even though an XP Embedded license is actually cheaper).
Now, though, we are seeing storage manufacturers offer NAS boxes with little *nix kernels that can connect to IP cameras, and store video. There’s usually a pretty cumbersome and somewhat slow web interface to access the video, but no enterprise level management tool to determine who gets to see what, and when.
The advanced DIY user, can buy one of these boxes, hook up a bunch of cheap Dahua cameras, and sleep like a baby, not worrying about Windows Update wrecking havoc during the night. As a cheapskate, I can live without the plethora of features and configuration options that a traditional VMS offers. It’s OK that it is a little bit slow and cumbersome to extract video from the system, because I only very, very rarely need to do so. I am not going for the very cheap (and total crap) solutions that Home Depot and Best Buy offer. Basically, if it doesn’t work, it’s too expensive.
Further up the pyramid though, we have the medium businesses. Retail stores, factories, offices, places where you don’t DIY, but instead call a specialist. And this, I think, is where the NAS boxes might make a dent in the incumbent VMS vendors revenue stream.
The interests of a DIY’er and the specialist align, in the sense that both want a hassle free solution. The awesome specialist is perfectly capable of buying the parts and building and configuring a PC, but to be honest, tallying the cost and frustration if things don’t work as expected. I think I’d pick the slightly more expensive, but hassle-free solution. Even if it didn’t support as many different cameras as the hyper-flexible solution that I am used to. I do not see an advantage to being able to play Hearts on my video surveillance system.
The question is then. For how long, will the specialist also sell a traditional VMS to go along with the NAS? How long before the UI of the NAS becomes so good that you really don’t need/want a VMS to go along with it? Some of the folks I’ve spoken to, show the fancy VMS, but advises, and prods the customer in the direction of a less open solution. Any of their employees can install and maintain (replace) the appliance, but managing the VMS takes training, in some cases certification and generally takes longer to deploy.
We are not there yet, but will we get there? I think so.
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