Cloud VMS Trends and Strategy

Today, due to the global business world’s high rate of cloud computing adoption, an increasing number of organizations are considering the deployment of cloud-based physical security applications, whereas five years ago that was not the case.

Cloud adoption in Japan has been rapid. International Data Corporation Japan (IDC) predicts the size of the total public cloud services market is $4.5 billion – an increase of 29.8% over the previous year. Japan’s private cloud services market size accounted for $2.85 billion in total, which was an increase of 44.8% from the previous year.  Driving this estimate is the increasing adoption of cloud services by Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises. Japan’s cloud services market expansion is the product of direct private and public investment in ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) infrastructure and a commitment to cloud services by the government.

What makes cloud computing possible is virtualization, which is the creation of a software-based representation of a physical hardware function, so that software interacting with the virtual version cannot tell that it’s interacting with other software, rather than the hardware it represents. No advance in information technology in the past six decades has offered a greater range of quantifiable benefits than has virtualization.

Virtualization Benefits

The initial application of virtualization in the computer world was for virtualizing server computers, with VMware and Microsoft being the early competitors in providing server virtualization software. The typical corporate Window-based server runs at less than 10% utilization, drawing around 500 W power. Using virtualization, the same server can easily perform as six servers and achieve 60% utilization, drawing 550 W, without decreasing the server’s useful life. This means six times fewer physical servers are needed. Today’s high-performance servers can be used to virtualize up to twelve standard physical servers. These are real and easily achievable savings, hence the attractiveness of data center virtualization.

Virtualizing VMS Servers

Inspired by successes in server virtualization, some organizations have are hosting their security camera video management systems (VMS) in the organization’s data center, partly offsetting the cost of the increased network bandwidth need with the virtualization cost savings. Unlike typical business servers, most video recording servers run at 60% or more disk/CPU utilization. The higher rate of utilization means that one high-performance data center server can at best replace two or three standard video recording servers on local premises.

Although data center virtualization of video recording servers does lower total server costs, data center VMS deployments don’t take full advantage of all virtualization has to offer. Today, cloud computing technology has advanced virtualization capabilities well beyond server virtualization. Cloud computing has replaced server virtualization with separately virtualized CPUs, memory, data storage and networking. These resources are combined into shared resource pools in a cloud data center. This allows a software application built for cloud computing to request computing, memory, storage and network resources on an as-needed basis, so that it only consumes the resources it needs hour to hour or minute to minute.  This can reduce cost and increase reliability.

In contrast, a physical or virtual server must be sized to the maximum processing, storage and network requirements that a VMS may have at any time. Thus, even virtual VMS servers must be oversized even though their full capacities won’t be utilized most of the time. This is what makes a cloud-based VMS offering more attractive – and in many cases more affordable – than client-server VMS software deployed on data center physical or virtual servers.

Cloud Essential Characteristics

The ISO/IEC 17788 standard, Cloud Computing Overview and Vocabulary provides this description for cloud computing: “Paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand.” The 17788 standard identifies six essential cloud characteristics. These characteristics are used to make high-performance applications more affordable and available than can be accomplished with on-premises or data-center systems.

On-demand self-service. Users can access applications and provision cloud platform and infrastructure resources, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Broad network access. Cloud service capabilities are available over the network and the Internet, and are accessed in standard ways such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations.

Resource pooling. The cloud service provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to customer demand.

Multi-tenancy. Cloud service resources are allocated in such a way that multiple customers and their computations and data are isolated from and inaccessible to one another, and usage by one customer does not impact the usage performance of another customer.

Rapid elasticity and scalability. Cloud service resources can be rapidly and  elastically adjusted, in some cases automatically, to quickly increase or decrease resources such as storage, processing, memory and network bandwidth. For the cloud service customer, the physical or virtual resources available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time automatically, subject to constraints of service agreements.

Measured service. Delivery of cloud services is such that usage can be monitored, controlled, reported, and billed. This is an important feature needed to optimize and validate the delivered cloud service. The purpose is to assure that customers only pay for the resources that they use.

These characteristics are what allow a single cloud application (for example: Google Mail, Twitter, Line, Facebook, and Salesforce) to be used by tens of millions of subscribers.

Continuous Delivery

Cloud applications are developed using a software engineering methodology called continuous delivery, an approach by which software is built, improved, tested and delivered in small increments on a continuous basis. Thus, cloud customers are always using the latest version of software, which is automatically maintained in the cloud without any action needed on the part of the customer or a service reseller.  This yields more reliable and more cyber secure applications.

Cloud-Engineered Video Management Systems

Cloud systems engineering is very different and much more advanced than software engineering for server-based applications.  It provides system capabilities previously not possible, which is why cloud-based services continue to transform the way people live and the way organizations operate. Technology in all industries is being transformed by cloud computing capabilities.

Cloud computing technology makes it possible to fine-tune cloud service resources so that they elastically fit the changing demands of security surveillance camera video management systems. A high-performance Cloud VMS maximally improves the work of end-user customers, and strongly supports the effective installation, commissioning, and management of the VMS system under a subscription-based managed services model.

Cloud VMS Advantages

A well-engineered Cloud VMS has the following advantages over on-premises or data-center systems.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership. A Cloud VMS data center has lower per-user costs than an on-premises deployment or a deployment in a customer or third-party data-center, due to extremely large economies of scale and the fact that its infrastructure is designed and built specifically for video management. It has fully utilized hardware, lower power costs and reduced IT staffing costs, which are savings shared by its subscribers. The initial cost is extremely low, consisting of setup fees for low-cost on-site appliances that receive the camera video streams and buffer them for sending to the Cloud VMS.

Redundancy and Reliability. Full hot redundancy for all computing, storage and network components is not affordable in on-premises and typical security camera environment. However, due to advanced cloud computing technology and the economies of widely shared infrastructure, full hot redundancy is affordably achievable in a Cloud VMS data center.

Technology Longevity. Traditional VMS systems have a relatively short time to obsolescence. They may start with robust features, but their core feature set is fixed at the time of hardware purchase, and there is limited ability to update the hardware. Given today’s exponential pace of technology advancement, fixed hardware becomes obsolete at an increasingly faster rate. In contrast, cloud virtualization means that a Cloud VMS data center’s hardware can be upgraded or replaced at any time, with no impact on subscriber usage, while the Cloud VMS system is kept technologically current.

Strong Cybersecurity. The Cloud VMS advantages of shared costs and up-to-date technology also apply to Cloud VMS cybersecurity features. The strongest cybersecurity measures and practices, including regular penetration testing, are affordable and technically feasible for a Cloud VMS data center but not for on-premises or data-center VMS systems.

High Usability. A well-engineered Cloud VMS system will include a modern mobile device app in addition to its main Cloud VMS web application, so that users can conveniently access VMS features anywhere in the world that their computers or mobile devices have Internet connectivity. Cloud VMS subscribers can activate features such as video analytics with the click of a button, without needing to install any additional software.

What to Look for In a Cloud VMS

There are 12 points to check when selecting a Cloud VMS.

1. Camera Selection. Make sure that the Cloud VMS on-site appliances are listed as ONVIF Profile S clients so that they provide the broadest camera support. Also check the Cloud VMS camera compatibility list, which should contain more than 1,500 tested cameras along with the versions of camera firmware that were tested. The list should identify audio support and support for cameras with 360° and 180° panorama views, fisheye views, and multi-view streams.
2. Recording During Loss of Internet Connectivity. Make sure that the on-site appliances support two-day video buffering and provide intelligent transmission to the Cloud VMS that respectfully shares the available Internet bandwidth. Local recording should also be available.
3. Encryption of Data at Rest. 256-bit AES encryption should be applied to locally-buffered, locally-recorded and cloud-recorded video.
4. Data Center Location. Data center locations should be specified, along with how data protection and data privacy considerations are addressed.
5. Cloud Storage Redundancy. Recorded video should be protected against loss by fully redundant video storage (triple-redundancy is best).
6. Cloud Data Center Ownership. By owning owns its own data centers, the Cloud VMS provider can assure that the data center infrastructure is designed and operated for high-performance video recording and viewing.
7. Strong Cybersecurity. On-premises devices should be fully cloud-managed and include firewall functionality that guards against camera malware attacks and prevents outward communication by cameras that may be infected. Two-factor authentication must be provided for the Cloud VMS application. Its defenses must be regularly checked by strong penetration testing.
8. First Responder Video Sharing. Secure and easily-managed first-responder access should be provided for selected live and recorded video to maximally support incident response.
9. System Performance Metrics. System performance should be tracked using downloadable bar charts and line graphs that include Camera LAN Packet Loss, Camera LAN Bandwidth Usage, Internet Bandwidth Usage, and On-Site Appliance Buffer Usage.
10. Automatic Offline Camera Recovery. When a camera goes offline, the on-site buffering or recording device shall automatically take steps to restore the camera connection, including rebooting the camera and issuing an alert for manual power recycling if the camera does not come back online.
11. Integration API. The Cloud VMS should provide a secure API for integration with other systems such as physical access control, command center monitoring, retail point of sale and store franchise management.
12. Dealer Friendliness. Find a dealer that is friendly, knowledgeable and helpful in providing surveillance video services including the Cloud VMS service.

About Dean Drako

Founded by Dean, Eagle Eye Networks is the world’s largest cloud-based video surveillance company. Dean has founded,  lead, and built multiple remarkable security companies. Concurrently with Eagle Eye Networks, Dean is the owner and Chairman of Brivo, Inc., a cloud-based access control company.  Previously, as founder, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks (NYSE: CUDA), Dean created the first email security appliance and other cyber security products. Dean received his BSEE from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and MSEE from the University of California, Berkeley. Goldman Sachs named Dean as one of the “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2014.”

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