As above, do you provide a chargeable monthly/yearly network monitoring service? Monitoring if cameras are pingable, server disk space is free, hard drive errors, raid card errors, windows services changing state etc.
I know some of this can simply be done through the VMS but as systems become more complex, being able to manage many sites from a central location would be a good idea.
Let me know your thoughts.
As an IT organization we offer Managed Service Agreements (MSA's) to our customers. Included in these MSA's are network / device monitoring tools that enable us to manage, maintain, and service the devices (servers, workstations, mobile devices, network devices, etc). The business case for an MSA is not too difficult to make given that these are technologies that support their entire business.
We have tried to offer the same service for physical security devices but find that most customers cannot stomach the additional cost. We typically hear that they will deal with it when an issue arrises.
We would prefer if customers used such a service for their entire business (IT and physical security) because it would enable us to 1) ensure that there are very little outages or catastrophic issues, and 2) if there are any, then we can manage them much faster and with better outcomes for the customer. However, most customers do not see the value in this type of service for physical security products (the obvious exception here is mission critical applications, but in those situations cost is rarely a major factor).
Thanks for your reply and I would agree that cost is a major issue when it comes to trying to sell network monitoring, especially to smaller installs. Larger customers that need oversight of when mission critical events happen would be easier to sell the service to.
no, I'm not impressed your Central Station has been in business for the last 400 years. No, your vast experience with dry copper back to the CO and alarm bells on the outer wall of a bank doesn't mean you know monitoring. IT has had SNMP and many many other tools for the last 50 years and this problem covered. Since in general you can't trust integrators to be network literate exactly why would you trust an integrator to do monitoring?
yes, a monitoring service would be nice. IT figure this out a long time ago. YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Your IPv4 packets look like everything else. Use existing tools, use existing protocols. And yes, if an integrator wanted to offer e.g. some Splunk-based monitoring of -a- portion of a network (like... the cameras) that might make sense. Make sure you integrate with the other monitoring solutions in place (read: you better send alerts to IT if you see a problem.)
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