Watch: The Cloud Video / VSaaS Debate: Hosted Vs Managed
Watch the 2-minute video to learn more:
For more IPVM resources, read:
- 269-page IPVM VMS / VSaaS Book
- Lessons Learned From 15 Years of VSaaS
- VSaaS Rankings - Arcules, Avigilon, Eagle Eye, Genetec, Meraki, OpenEye, Qumulex, Rhombus, Turing, Verkada, Vivotek, YourSix
- Integrator's Favorite VSaaS Providers
Script for the video below:
A central debate in video surveillance today is what counts as cloud?
IPVM has been testing, tracking, and researching this since VSaaS's early days 15+ years ago.
Most applications now run in the cloud - email, file storage, CRM software, database management software, websites, and more, but video surveillance presents special challenges.
The cameras, by definition, need to be on-site to capture video. While advances in CODECs and smart compression have improved efficiency in streaming video surveillance, plus wide area network bandwidth capacity has improved, the challenge is continuously streaming surveillance cameras from businesses still often requires tens, hundreds, if not thousands of megabits per second.
This forces many to decide between hosted and managed video surveillance.
With managed video, the recorded video surveillance continues to be stored predominantly locally at the building or place where it was captured.
By contrast, with hosted, the video is captured on-site but is either immediately or shortly thereafter transmitted upstream to the cloud.
Some argue that only hosted is true cloud video surveillance because only with hosted is the video actually stored in the cloud.
IPVM research shows, though, regardless of opinion, managed video is, by far, the most common way today of bringing video surveillance to the cloud, with well over 90% of deployments being managed, not hosted.
For example, this is the default implementation for cloud companies such as Ava / Avigilon Alta, Meraki, Openeye, Rhombus, Verkada, plus its the default add-on for Avigilon Unity, Exacq, Network Optix, and other VMSes and the default cloud option for NVRs.
Even Eagle Eye, which advocates cloud hosting, admits that growing numbers of its users are choosing managed video.
IPVM testing shows that managed delivers the most fundamental user benefits, including:
- eliminating insecure remote connections such as port forwarding
- simplifying remote access setup so monitoring with phones is easy
- enabling cloud user management across sites
Certainly, there is value in fully cloud-hosting video surveillance, including eliminating on-site recorders, but now, for most, the cost and complexity of being fully hosted are more than the benefits.
Driven by managed video, IPVM sees cloud video going mainstream today.