I just read a popular article on where to deploy video analytics at Security Info Watch, Axis: Video Analytics at the Edge.
The article written by Fredrik Nilsson of Axis Communications does a great job of describing different deployment options for deploying video analytics. While I agree with the bandwidth advantages and improved analytic performance for video analytics in the camera, I believe the cost of implementing this scenario is not always clearly an advantage.
1. Operational cost: maintaining the more complex configurations and software which are required for analytics at the edge may result in increased operational costs compared to a more centralized configuration scheme. Video management software must be more sophisticated to manage custom configurations in 10,000 camera devices versus 1,000 NVR’s with video analytics. Either can be done, but guess which one costs less?
2. Cost to change: Video analytics is rapidly changing. The ability to cost effectively upgrade the analytic components is extremely important. A solution which performs analytics in software on high powered servers should have much more flexibility for upgrades. In addition, upgrading the processing capacity of commodity based servers performing analytics should prove to be lower cost than upgrading all of one’s cameras at the edge.
3. Cost Optimization: Not all cameras need video analytics. With a separate device performing analytics, it is possible to change which cameras have analytics being performed. When hardware in the camera is required, one has to replace cameras to turn on video analytics. If analytics are needed in a different area, more cameras have to be purchased or the cameras have to be physically moved.
Having the option to add analytics in the recording device (NVR or DVR) or other server one or more “layers” above the cameras helps address the above cost issues. Products such as Amietis Symphony supply such a capability through their NVR software which performs analytics on PC based servers.
To fully realize the advantages of analytics outside of the camera, one needs to be able to integrate Video management with NVR’s and Cameras all in one. Amietis does not appear to currently publish a simple web or XML based API for integration with their analytics. Rather, one must use Amietis’ video management software in combination with their analytics to deliver a working solution. Not exactly something a web based MVaaS provider is able to do since Amietis Symphony is not web based itself.
Cernium on the other hand appears to have a product line which has both analytics only software and hardware based solutions with open, XML based API’s. They appear to have a business model for integrating with Video Management software providers as they recently announced integration with Milestone systems.
Axis’ open approach of exposing simple, web based and XML based API’s to interface with their IP camera products is likely to help them gain a lot of traction for their analytics working in a variety of video management platforms since this makes it so much easier to integrate into many video management platforms, ultimately delivering the ability to mix and match the best products to solve problems.