Operating Systems Do Matter, Part 1

What importance do software operating systems have in the IP video surveillance software industry?

In 2002, I left PeopleSoft to work for Heery where I spent two years designing and implementing the security industries’ first large-scale IP video surveillance system for Atlanta Public Schools. At the time IP based video surveillance was an unknown by the security industry. Skeptics (read local integrators responding to RFPs) challenged IP solutions by raising doubts and casting fears about everything from image quality to storage limitations. So here we are six years later with superior image quality megapixel IP cameras and storage cost available at less than $1,000/TB.

At the time of the Atlanta Public Schools implementation the only affordable software products available (e.g. Milestone, D3data, Sharks Eye) were basically consumer-based PC solutions not designed for enterprise applications. Even today these products utilize standard PC hardware running consumer grade operating systems (Windows ME, 2000, XP, and Vista).

Because the surveillance software products were limited in the early days and lacked a robust architecture the software that was selected required over two years of de-bugging by the software manufacture before the system worked as designed.

The lesson I learned was that the choice of operating systems do matter and so I started a software company in 2003 that would develop IP based surveillance software designed for enterprise applications while supporting commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) cameras, switches, and servers that would run a variety of operating systems, not just updated versions of the same operating system.

Part II – Limitation of operating systems…

Christopher Uiterwyk is the CEO of ipConfigure.

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