An integrated approach to security is the need of the hour

On the sideline of the event, VARINDIA met up with Sudhindra Holla, Sales Director, India & SAARC - Axis Communications to understand the current physical security scenario in the country and its evolution - 

How has the outlook towards security changed over the years?

When we look at security from a holistic viewpoint, what has changed is that the systems are getting more and more open and integrated. If you see historically, they all existed as separate systems – access control was separate, CCTV cameras were separate and above all they were proprietary in nature. But now they all are getting integrated, with the need of the customer changing from having separate systems to an integrated solution. For instance, when an incident occurs, the investigating team can’t keep going to separate systems to analyze the situation and then take an action. If they spot something unusual in the CC camera, they have to automate the announcement and actions immediately.So an integrated approach is the need of the hour.

Also, systems are getting intelligent and so they can be used for business intelligence as well. If you look at the smart city deployments, different systems involving surveillance integrate with each other and they use the information available to arrive at intelligent decisions. Such is the power of physical security systems today.

Over time, cameras are also learning or are trained in certain patterns, like it is understanding what and when it needs to take an action on. 

What technological enhancements has Axis made into its products over time?

Axis has the lineage of 25 years in the camera firmware. We have one of the most robust firmware and have built intelligence on top of that. We are the first to come out with the network camera, we helped people move from the analogue systems to network video systems. We have brought in a lot of innovations in network CCTV cameras, like they are more powerful now and can run lot of analytics at the edge like video motion detection, face recognition. So these devices are becoming intelligent sensors based on which some actions can be taken. They also have edge storage, the capacity for which is also increasing. Another way in which we have improved the camera is how they perform in difficult light conditions; even in very poor lighting conditions you can get very good quality video footages which can be used as evidences. 

Also, cameras are capable of compressing more and more now, thus bringing down the storage cost. 

Next we also have thermal cameras that can be used for manufacturing or perimeter applications and can provide surveillance in no light conditions. Their use is not to recognize anybody’s face but to detect or identify any kind of intrusions taking place inside the compound. 

We have also launched our audio systems or public announcement systems. Since the audio system remained separate from the video earlier, we are trying to integrate both together so that the system can be used more intelligently. In a similar manner, we are trying to integrate different devices in the system, resulting in the ease of operations getting enhanced from an end-user perspective. So we are trying to bring a lot of systems around the video and are heading towards newer types of equipments.