As IP Security & Surveillance becomes commonplace on corporate IT networks, the ability to extend a system’s reach beyond the company boundary to include off-site cameras and remote viewing clients becomes more and more appealing and can often help sell such systems.

On the surface, recording and replaying video seems such a simple task, and if that’s all you want to do then it is a simple task. However, rarely in the CCTV world is this sufficient.

As a developer of core CCTV software components for manufacturers, OEM partners and other third parties such as integrators, we have seen an increase in the need to understand the networking aspects of each project right from initial conception.

The pan, tilt and zoom camera has been a key enabling technology within the surveillance industry for nearly as long as CCTV itself.

A recent visit to Essen Security trade show highlighted the numerous software applications now available for IP security systems.

At the recent IP-in-Action event in Oxford, I heard a speaker suggest that it wouldn’t be the use of the Internet Protocol that makes IP cameras take off but rather the additional benefits that IP enables.

Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) or License plate recognition (LPR) has been around for a number of years.

Some often glossed-over and perhaps less glamorous features of modern IP video surveillance systems are the non-media data channels supported to a greater or lesser extent by almost all IP media devices.

There is now no doubt that IP based technology is the way forward for the security and surveillance industry with digitally-networked video products leading the way, closely followed by Access Control and Alarm Systems.

The security and surveillance industry’s ever-increasing adoption of digital networked technologies is making life much easier for manufacturers, integrators, installers and end-users of CCTV products.

There is now more and more market research showing that IP camera sales will overtake analogue in the not too distant future.

In the analogue CCTV world, equipment from virtually every manufacturer is compatible with every other manufacturer; you can plug a camera from one vendor into a matrix switch from another and view the video on a monitor provided by a third.