Why video surveillance should be installed by IT professionals

With the convergence of security and network technologies, it is becoming more important to consider having your video surveillance systems installed and managed by IT professionals.

There are many nuances involved with network video surveillance systems that can affect data infrastructures or be affected by faulty IP video camera setups.

In the past, the majority of video camera and surveillance systems were analog and typically installed by electricians and security professionals. This was fine because analog video systems run on their own cabling infrastructure, usually coax, and was not typically connected to an organization's data network.

The development of IP based network video cameras and surveillance systems started the convergence of network and security infrastructures. This opened up a wide array of options for end users to have video surveillance information on any type of device they preferred. This is great, except many times the impact of adding surveillance systems is not taken into account by installers who do not have the necessary background or experience in data networks and network infrastructures.

Most IT professionals know the networks they are in charge of intimately and have them running as finely tuned machines to process IP based traffic for their organization. They must keep them running this way, because nobody can accept any downtime of their data systems these days.

We have run into multiple scenario's where we are called in to find out why a data system is down or running poorly. When investigating, we typically find that a third party video or surveillance system provider has installed a camera or DVR without any insight on the havoc it can cause in the IT infrastructure.

It is important to have your IT pro install these systems, if that is one of their services, or at least get them involved early on in the design process if you plan to use a third party provider. Your IT pro will be able to check important items like compatibility, network capacity, IP address planning and network security considerations - all items that never needed to be considered with analog based video camera systems.

Miller Technologies installs several lines of IP based/ network video systems including professional grade systems from Axis Communications. We also have years of experience helping third party providers integrate video into end user's data infrastructures.

If you have a video camera or surveillance system project in the works, it is important to consider using an IT pro to either install it or work along side your third party provider to avoid any potential chronic network issues or expensive downtime.