Wireless Issues For Critical Applications

Nice to be getting great quotes (of course, I wrote them myself, but who's going to notice :)

Excerpts follow:

Wireless Issues For Critical Applications
Minimize Potential Problems In The Enterprise

In the opinion of Ksenia Coffman, marketing manager for Firetide (www.firetide.com), however, wireless mesh networking is the best choice for critical applications. Coffman says wireless mesh networks provide redundancy and multiple paths to ensure reliability of critical information, be it enterprise application data, alarms, access control communications, or video transmission.

Coffman says high-performing wireless mesh infrastructure is not trivial to design or deploy, and professional-grade wireless equipment is a considerable investment. “Before making a wireless move,” Coffman notes, “enterprises should carefully weigh the costs vs. the benefits. In an outdoor setting, for example, wireless makes a lot of sense, but it’s not a decision to be taken lightly.”

Wireless vs. Cable

Ksenia Coffman, marketing manager for Firetide (www.firetide.com), says she doesn’t see cable going away and enterprises switching to 100% wireless, especially in an indoor environment (or the “carpeted space,” as she calls it). “However,” Coffman notes, “in outdoor areas or in a mobile environment, wireless makes a lot of sense. A typical example would be a large enterprise campus, university campus, or a large medical facility.”

Full article.

PR Opportunity Pipeline

I thought I'd post this "behind the scenes in PR" chart. My total pipeline or "PR opportunities" is currently 210; it was close to 250 at the end of last year, before I reset the "complete" row. In 2008, we made 42 announcements! All in all, I've churned through 120 opportunities before I put them in the "dead" pile.

Toshiba, OnSSI and Firetide IP Video Seminar

Toshiba Security invited us to participate in an IP video seminar they put together at Milpitas, CA (here's the promo). Well, they invited OnSSI, and OnSSI's VP of marketing called me. So I (selflessly) attribute the invitation to my relationship with OnSSI. Of course, wireless video is a good addition to any camera vendor's seminar: it's new, it's challenging, it's creative. Quite a few people came up to me and said "I'm here because of Firetide."

The audience was primarily dealers/integrators, with some consultants, distributors, and end-customers. Today was well attended with about 50 attendees total over both AM and PM sessions. The best part is that it’s at no cost to us; our investment was time and getting a presenter there. I presented the PM session, since our sales manage had to take off for the airport. I got more questions than OnSSI and Toshiba; there was a definite interest in wireless, especially in mobile video surveillance.

I had an interesting discussion at lunch with a manager (owner?) of SightMind; they offer franchise opportunities in IP video surveillance. I picked his mind a bit about IP camera vendors: Sony is first in their book for superior image quality; then Panasonic. He considers Axis to be "a safe choice", but not necessarily the best, although Axis' strong point is the most complete product line out of all the vendors.

Wireless Video Surveillance - Niche or Mainstream, Part 1

I posted this question on a LinkedIn group I belong to and got many thoughtful response, so I thought I'd repost here (without attribution).

Here's my original query:

Wireless video surveillance -- niche or mainstream?

Would love to see your comments on whether use of wireless transport in IP video surveillance is entering mainstream, or is still considered niche. Also, what are your thoughts on factors that may be hindering adoption: complexity, lack of integrator expertise, lack of throughput, cost vs benefit, etc.?

Responses:

Wireless is one of the ways to be considered; like all the top tech tools, in the hands of the right companies wireless can make the difference. It depends a lot on the environment. Optic fiber can cost sometime more than double. A good 20 to 27% of the world wide solutions can be implemented on wireless, or even better a non wired solution. To have a real convergence of the video surveillance systems excluding the non wired side seems impossible.

For sure wireless implementations require high competences, plus the real challenge is normally lodged on the end user side. Does he really wants to take the "risk" of the non wired? At the end of the story, is 60%confidence plus 40% cost calculation. If one or the other missing, then, the result is wire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it's mainstream, in the sense that it's commonly used and generally works. At the same time, it's still certainly a fraction of all deployments - it can't be more than 5% of all cameras, maybe less.

To me, the big thing with wireless is the cost. Industrial class wireless gear is going to cost $3,000 - $5,000 per camera. When this price point drops by an order of magnitude I think this will open up wireless usage significantly. One way to get far lower cost is to use cheap SOHO wireless access points. However, that's risky or unacceptable for most wireless video surveillance deployments.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my experience, right now it's a niche used primarily in existing applications and add-ons. In new installs, it's an expense that's typically not necessary. Hard wire CAT5/6 and their infrastructure is much less expensive than wireless routers, and in high-end video applications the throughput can be an issue.

We do use quite a bit of point-to-point 5.8mhz transmission for longer distances, and that segment is picking up every month.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While it may be a bit niche is the more common, run-rate market (building security, etc.) wireless is very popular with wide area projects such as town centres and university campuses, if not for the entire network then at least for some links between locations.

We have had significant success with wireless in Australia for town centre projects using multiple different wireless vendors and different network topologies.

The most successful applications I have been involved in work mostly with distributed storage systems so as to reduce the reliance on the wireless infrastructure. This is great because it means that the recording/storage (which is arguably the most important part of the system) is not affected by adverse weather such as rain, hale, snow, etc. which, as we know, can have significant impact on the performance of the wireless signal.

In many of these sites, cameras are grouped together, for example there may be 4 cameras on a street scape that are within a reasonable distance of a central location, such as a utility store. This makes it easy to wire them back to a single switch (for example a low cost PoE switch) which then connects to a local server and the wireless access point. This way we only use the wireless for retrieval of footage and live viewing, which also means we can deploy a lower cost access point in the location due to the lower level of reliance/bandwidth required.

Then of course, there is a large amount of reliance on a competent installer, of which there are few with wireless experience. There are so few that many of the wireless vendors in Australia will offer the time of their own experts to do the wireless survey in order to train people up quickly and instil in the them the requirement to always do a survey before specifying a product.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I plan to pitch a "Wireless Video Surveillance - Niche or Mainstream" column to a security publication; we'll see what happens!