Subscriber Discussion

Remote Monitoring Software That Pulls Up Client Information / Location?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
•Jan 07, 2017

We're a very small remote monitoring company in California that provides remote guarding for our clients. We're small right now that a VMS is capable of providing us what we need -- We're looking into CMS options at the moment but that would be something we switch to in the somewhat near future.

However, for now, we're looking for a software that would provide us information on our clients to get better situational awareness. I.e. pull up a client's location and get staff information, maps of the location, where the cameras are mounted, additional information / notes on the clients.

I was wondering if any of you guys had recommendations on software that can provide us this. Let me know what you guys think, all feedback is appreciated! 

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Brian Karas
•Jan 07, 2017
IPVM

You need central station automation software.

This can get very complex, depending on how far you want to go with it.  Top packages will integrate with (and/or provide) VoIP platforms (to automatically record all incoming and outgoing calls), billing management, GPS tracking to live-monitor guard locations and much more.

Prices start around $10K for a basic setup and can easily go over $100K for full packages with some customization, though a trend in recent years has been to go to cloud-hosted solutions where you pay per-seat per-month.

Major players in the US market, in rough order of marketshare/commonality:

There are also a handful of smaller providers as well.

All of these packages should be able to handle pulling up client information, providing operators with an outline of incident response steps, contact info for the account, event routing (based on matching operators to accounts, round-robin, least-busy, etc.), full logging of data and details related to the incident, and reporting packages to provide incident response reports to customers.

You mentioned remote guarding, which often involves video (in my experience), you will want to pay particular attention to how the video is handled in each platform, some will have strong support for native video, others will use an external platform for the video handling.

The most common platform for external video integration is SureView Immix, and if you are going to be doing mostly remote guarding with video and not burglar alarm monitoring you can run Immix stand-alone in the sense that it should be able to handle all your basic central station requirements.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
•Jan 07, 2017
In reply to Brian Karas

Thank you Brian. We do video verification only so I'm not entirely sure if the other companies mentioned will benefit us. We have spoken to SureView and are interested in that option already. Do you have other recommendations like SureView? 

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Brian Karas
•Jan 07, 2017
IPVM
In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #1

The closest thing to SureView is iViewNow, but there are some important differences (or at least there were, it's been a year since I was heavily involved in CS software).

SureView can take in native events from a variety of devices, and as I mentioned above, it can function as full automation software for a video-centric CS. iViewNow works as a sort of "sidecar" to an automation package like MKS (just an example). The automation package handles all the account management and event routing, and iViewNow handles the video integration (again, this might have changed in the last year). Also, iViewNow receives events from a burg panel, and then pulls in video from 1 or more cameras associated with the zone from the panel. This scenario requires a burg panel at every site, not a huge cost, but when you have some more advanced/intelligent video analytics devices (and there are several) that can generate events directly, the burg-panel just becomes a clunky step backwards (IMO) to getting events from the customer site back to your CS.

From what I think you need, I would probably look at:

  • BOLD
  • Immix
  • MKS

(in that order) first. BOLD had a pretty decent video integration (again, just my opinion) and you may find that it can do what you need, and grow with your operation. 

I have also seen some places use Milestone for remote-guarding purposes, but it required every customer site to also be on Milestone to work efficiently, and had other limitations as compared to CS software, but it is an option to look at if you decide you want something more VMS-like.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
•Jan 08, 2017
In reply to Brian Karas

Thank you Brian. You have been an amazing help. We have a lot to learn from you!

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
•Jan 07, 2017

How would you handle end users with different brands of units?

We have a client looking to add this to their security services. The issue I see is the various end users are going to have different manufacturers equipment. Do you access the cameras directly?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
•Jan 07, 2017
In reply to Undisclosed Integrator #2

The clients we have been monitoring, we were able to setup from scratch to be compatible. We have clients that had an existing infrastructure that we just altered some of the equipment to be compatible. 

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