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Closed circuit television (CCTV) has been used for surveillance purposes since the 1940s, but it was only in the 1990s with the arrival of digital multiplexing that the industry truly boomed. Digital multiplexing, where numerous digital data streams can be combined into one signal, was a game changer as it meant that numerous cameras could record simultaneously. CCTV quickly became an affordable and useful tool, used widely by both private and public sector organisations. However, its flaws soon became apparent.

We have become all too familiar with black-and-white, low-resolution CCTV images. This is because the industry had, until recently, lacked the ability to capture and store larger volumes of data. Instead, it relied on narrow bandwidth cameras whose grainy images were often impossible to interpret and analyse, rendering the process of surveillance redundant.

CCTV'S SECOND WAVE
Long overdue developments in image resolution and software have now arrived and the surveillance sector is once again booming, with users transitioning from legacy analogue systems to more advanced Internet Protocol (IP) surveillance networks. Indeed, according to a recent Allied Market Research report, the global IP Video Surveillance and VSaaS Market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 37.3% between 2012 and 2020.

There are two drivers behind this growth. Firstly, CCTV has become more affordable and serves a wider range of purposes: protecting organisations from theft, meeting regulatory and legal requirements, and gathering data for future analysis. Secondly, new technologies, such as the introduction of IP systems and 4K images, have made CCTV much more attractive as a reliable surveillance solution. But the requirement to retain potentially valuable video for longer and longer periods of time continues to increase. This requirement, combined with increased camera frame rates and resolutions, makes video files even larger and harder to store, which results in administrators having to make tough decisions about what to keep and discard.

THE STORAGE SQUEEZE
With surveillance becoming increasingly prevalent, and camera resolutions and frame rates continuously improving, the amount of video needed to be stored and accessed is growing dramatically. However, video is typically only kept for a very brief period, despite the potential need to review older video content later on for forensic or legal purposes. The cost of storing and accessing surveillance video content has been a significant barrier against longer-term retention.

THE STORAGE INDUSTRY ANSWERS BACK
The good news is that it's now easier to store video surveillance data for a longer period of time. Spectra's Video Surveillance Archive Solutions easily and affordably retain surveillance video for the long term, seamlessly retaining video in the data centre on highly reliable disk and digital tape technology.

Adding digital tape to an existing architecture allows the user to easily and affordably retain video content for longer periods of time, while freeing up disk space for real-time surveillance content. Tiered storage reduces the need for disk drives by approximately 90 percent and a high performance server handles up to 1,200 Mb/sec for superior recording and retrieval. Furthermore, customers can retain petabytes of video surveillance data for longer periods of time through an interoperable solution that fits seamlessly into existing infrastructures.

Organisations today realise the importance of retaining data more than ever before. Instead of deleting video content, many organisations transfer their data into archives, knowing that this data may potentially have some value in the future.

The CCTV industry has taken huge strides forward with the advent of high-resolution images and new developments in software, such as facial recognition technology. This has created a surge in the amounts of data produced by CCTV systems, presenting a range of challenges for organisations to grapple with, from long-term retention, to integration and above all, cost. But the storage industry has an answer. Solutions such as those from Spectra Logic can solve the problem of costly video retention by allowing users to affordably archive their video on the most appropriate, reliable, and cost-effective storage tier available.
More info: www.spectralogic.com