There is no doubt that Hosted (cloud) Video Services for schools are here, and are taking over the traditional role of DVRs. This is a permanent transition, in my opinion, and is similar to the transformation of answering machines to voicemail. If you’re still fighting dead/stolen DVRs, and use video as an after-the-fact-see-what-happened tool, you need to take a look at hosted video services (also called Video as a Service – VaaS).

The reason hosted solutions are becoming the dominant video solution is the confluence of technologies of Internet Plug and Play, lower long-term off-site storage costs, effective bandwidth compression and intelligent bandwidth management (H.264), and ability to send real-time video clips to individuals on the go with smartphones (who doesn’t have one, nowadays?) and laptops.

With local (not hosted) video, namely DVRs, one had to worry a lot about their hard drive crashing, or the DVR being stolen or tampered (criminals today know to walk out with or destroy the DVR). If you’re in charge of several locations you may have different types of DVRs, and remembering how to extract video from them, or how to update their software can be challenging.

There are many benefits to hosted video services. First, a superintendant can have instant access to several schools right from his/her PC, and can enable others to access (view) some facilities, but not others, depending on their roles. Second, they can store their video on the remote (secure) server for up to a year at very low cost. They can always do a live look-in to any camera at any location, but more importantly, when something happens, say a motion detector triggers, or a panic button was pressed, or even a specific time has arrived, they can get a short video clip sent to them in seconds, vastly improving their situational awareness, reducing false alarm dispatch, or dispatching police with action descriptions.

All this costs less than traditional DVRs, possibly less than the maintenance budget to maintain the DVRs in a school district running. Furthermore, it’s a service – you pay a fixed low monthly (or more likely quarterly) fee that does not hit you by surprise. Even the entry fee and setup costs are very low; and being Plug and Play means that almost anyone can install and get the service started – you don’t need a static IP, or any IT knowledge. One literally connects the camera cables to the back of a small box and plugs in the broadband connection, and service starts one minute after that. Well, it can get a tad more complicated, when you want to schedule “virtual video tours” at a given time and camera, but the user interface running on your browser is pretty intuitive and simple. It may be fair to say that “The DVR is Dead – Long live Hosted Video Services.”
If interested take a look at http://www.ozvision.com, or contact me at alan.avidan@ozvision.com to discuss.