Memoori report: Business intelligence through video security

May was quite a month for mergers and acquisitions, alliances and funding in the security space. Activity was well down on the same month last year, but for the first five months of 2012 there has been only a marginal reduction in activity.

In both years, so far only one of the traditional major players – namely Tyco – has completed an acquisition and only one IPO has taken place. Incremental innovation is being introduced to new products, but there’s nothing there that looks ‘disruptive’.

However, change in the security sector continues to take place as we subtly move towards value added services.

Gaining business intelligence through video

My visit to IFSEC International 2012 revealed a number of stands where companies were actively showing how business intelligence can be gained through IP video surveillance systems. Two companies in particular, Axis Communications and Panasonic, realised excellent solutions displays showing how, in particular, vertical markets in which they’ve used video streams to provide business intelligence.

In both cases the concept was instigated by the camera manufacturers mentioned as a means to increase sales, but they’ve also worked with other suppliers of surveillance products to produce a seamless solution that fitted the needs of their end users. In addition, they’ve engaged with system installers and distributors, not only to orchestrate the marketing and sales strategies needed but also to identify new applications where they can add value for the end customer.

Alliances have hitherto just been about joining different manufacturers’ products so that they can communicate with each other. While technology still comes into the equation, and necessarily so, new alliances between all stakeholders – like those described above – are now being driven by what the end user needs in order to deliver real benefits over and above improvements to security performance.

The message to solutions providers is clear: if you want to compete with the top camera manufacturers you not only need to be up there with performance but also driving innovation in providing solutions that deliver more value add and a quicker return on investment for the buyer.

Sharing data: a business enabler

In March, Tomorrow Ventures backed a video surveillance start-up Prism SkyLabs, a cloud-based service that allows business owners to bring video feeds online, capture images from these feeds and share this data with consumers and the public. This looks like an interesting extension of the above, in turn making it possible for much smaller operations to enjoy the same benefits for a lower cost.

Most business premises, stores and restaurants have surveillance video systems running 24-hours a day and, unless there’s a theft or some other type of crime on site, this massive amount of surveillance video is effectively ‘unused’.

The start-up allows a business to download free software that detects cameras or video on a network, and showcases a number of images of the space to the business. Similar to the way in which you can pull images from videos using video editing software, Prism Skylabs pulls relevant images of your establishment and builds insightful visualisations from these photos while at the same time protecting customer privacy.

A good example is that it can show the path that people are taking in a store which can help owners gain insight into the performance of design or display, a heat map of bodies, a photo without any people in the store and more.

Sharing and syndicating images

Prism Skylabs allows users to share and syndicate these photos directly from their platform to a business’ Facebook page, Twitter stream, website or Yelp profile. The start-up is offering the ability to add these photos to Google+, YouTube and Picasa directly from the platform.

While this doesn’t produce the ‘richness’ of the solutions seen on the Panasonic and Axis Communications stands at IFSEC International 2012, maybe sharing will find some additional benefit at an affordable price?

Allan McHale is director of Memoori

The Memoori Blog focuses on business intelligence, comment and insight in relation to the physical security and smart grid industries (access the dedicated web link below)