Subscriber Discussion

Choosing The Right VMS For Starting Company

IQ
Ino Quandus
Jul 27, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Dear fellow members,

Being a man guarding company on one of the islands in the Caribbean for many years, we are now moving forward by offering more complete solutions, in which cameras are off course a major part. As we are staring up we face all kinds of challenges in which searching the IPVM forum and the Summer Cam Course helps a lot.

The challenge I want to reach out for is choosing the right VMS. For our fist few sites we are now installing mainly HIKvision due to expected value for money. Now we are experimenting with iVMS4200 (and 4500 for the apps). I have looked into the option of upgrading to iVMS5400 which seems to have some interesting options, but limits the max cams to around 250 if I'm not mistaken. Currently we have to manage around 50 but I expect to go into hundreds soon. Costs for licence are one time 5500 dollar or so.

I have read the best and worst VMS of 2016 post and visited some of those websites, but then still making the right choice is not easy. 

Can you please help me from your experience and via discussion, taking into account our current starting situation (in which investments and system needs to grow along time). Our main focus points are:

- Viewing and responding to alerts from IP (and some current turbo HD) cameras of 1 or multiple brands using line crossing, intrusion and other analytics

- Managing multiple client accounts (and their cameras) from the monitoring center, up to a couple of 100 cameras

- Involving two way audio as intervention option

- Report writing to clients (incidents and regular basis)

- Not focused on active viewing of all cameras, but mainly responding to alerts that pop up

 

Much appreciated, I look forward to your advice and tips.

 

Cheers,

Serge.

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Brian Karas
Jul 27, 2017
IPVM

Most VMSes are not well suited for this. For what you are describing, Sureview's Immix is a common platform to manage event-driven video in a central station.

I have also seen several central stations using Geovision's software as a lower-budget offering that seemed to work well.

 

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IQ
Ino Quandus
Jul 27, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Dear Brian,

 

Thanks for the reply, this looks very interesting. What is the main difference with this platform and common used VMS programs you think? I haven't really figured out the difference yet.

 

Thanks.

(1)
Avatar
Brian Karas
Jul 27, 2017
IPVM

There are three main things that I think are worth considering:

1) Many VMSes, even those with built-in handling of alarms, do not make full-on alarm handling elegant. Can you route events to operators based on factors like round-robin, least-busy, or dedicated accounts? What happens when an alarm is not acknowledged? Does it auto-escalate? etc. Monitoring customer alarms for money means you have to make sure every event gets handled, nothing gets missed, and that you do everything you are contracted to do (which leads to the next item)

2) Operator action logging. What did the operator do in response to the event? Did he review the video? Zoom in with a PTZ? Did he do these things immediately after receiving the alarm, or did he have a cup of coffee first? The customer claims your operator was rude, degrading, or unintelligible when doing the audio talk down. Can you easily play back the recording and operator actions?

3) You handled 5 events for a customer this weekend, and that goes against their monthly credit for "X" events, or means they owe you "Y" dollars. How is this integrated with your accounting/billing system? How do you provide the customer with a simple report of the events handled and responses?

Additionally, many VMSes work under the premise that a single corporate entity owns all of the connected devices. Managing users/rights/accounts/etc is not always as granular as it should be. A proper central station platform understands that each end-point is likely a unique entity, and may need specific policies for each one and that global settings/changes should not be applied (or pushed down) to all sites.

 

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IQ
Ino Quandus
Jul 27, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Thanks for this clear outline of the differences Brian, this will help a lot in choosing the right system at the right time. A system like IMMIX indeed seems like the way to go. 

Thanks for helping out, much appreciated!

 

Serge

(1)
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Brian Karas
Jul 27, 2017
IPVM

No problem, let us know if you have any other questions along the way.

Avatar
Nick Giannakis
Jul 28, 2017

Serge, I agree with Brian. It sounds like you should first evaluate central station monitoring software like Sureview or perhaps IView Now. If you intend to offer video to your costumers as a managed solution, you might also want to evaluate cloud managed VMS products like OpenEye or Eagle Eye. Both products integrate with central station monitoring software. I'd be happy to discuss directly in further detail. NGiannakis@openeye.net 

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IQ
Ino Quandus
Jul 28, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Thanks for the comment Nick, I will look into the options you mentioned, thanks!

IQ
Ino Quandus
Aug 02, 2017
IPVMU Certified

One more question, see if I get this right...

Stream Media Server Incoming/Outgoing Stream Support up to 64-ch incoming video stream Support up to 200-ch outgoing video stream

For example: Does that mean that when I have 2 clients (2 dvr/nvr) each with 10 cameras, so 20 in total, that I will use 20 channels on this and have 44 left? Or does this mean that for a single account the total amount of channels can be 64?

What item do you have to look for to find out how many camera's (channels) you can link to a certain VMS?

 

Thanks.

Avatar
Nick Giannakis
Aug 02, 2017

At OpenEye, we currently support up to (64) cameras per NVR. This is not to say the customer is limited to (64) cameras. We have customers with multiple NVR's at a single site and many with NVRs at multiple sites tied to a single account. You as the reseller have management access to all of your end-user accounts, each with potentially multiple NVRs. 

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Aug 10, 2017

More and more direct selling going on in these forums!  Haven't looked in a little while...

JH
John Honovich
Aug 10, 2017
IPVM

#1, in the context of a member asking for specific scenario like this, I am ok with providing direct vendor responses.

For example, if you want to suggest your cloud offering, feel free.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Aug 10, 2017

Always used IPVM as a learning tool so preferred, and still prefer, no to be selling (even if should).  Just seems to be the same few pushing systems but I guess it's a good thing if the questions are getting answered.

GW
Garry Winer
Aug 10, 2017

In a larger environment I would highly recommend Genetec. They have all of the features that you want and have a lot of options for viewing and responding to alarms and triggers. They also have federation and can scale to almost any size environment.  

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IQ
Ino Quandus
Aug 10, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Thanks for the tip Garry.

 

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