Business issues
"Video data is the currency of the security business," said Tawnia Wormell, StorageTek security systems coordinator. "It's what you use to investigate and to prevent losses. It's your eyes in the field." That's why StorageTek has more than 195 closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras strategically placed around its headquarters campus in Louisville, Colorado, and in offices across the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico.

Until recently, monitoring and maintaining the video data from those cameras was a labor-intensive chore. StorageTek found that each time a theft or event occurred, the tape-viewing portion of an investigation took an average of four hours and cost $146 in personnel time.

Solutions
StorageTek implemented its own security surveillance solution -- which combines the StorageTek BladeStore disk subsystem and DVTel's video encoders, decoders and NVRS (Network Video Recording System) software - to deliver a cost-effective security surveillance system. Using technology that converts CCTV camera signals from analog to digital and compresses the data for trouble-free transmission, StorageTek is able to transmit its surveillance video data over its corporate network. DVTel NVRS software associated with the cameras gives StorageTek event-based recording, activity sensing and masking, image caching, event retrieval, remote viewing capabilities and video controls that allow the user to set one frame rate for viewing and a different rate for recording, giving real time viewing while reducing the amount of storage required.

Financial benefits

- Incident review costs are dropping from an estimated $146 to $4.50 per event.
- Increased investigation productivity is expected to save $20,500 annually. - Maintenance outlays are projected to fall by $13,000 per year.

Business benefits
"Job performance rises dramatically with this system," said Wormell. "We used to wade through hours of unrelated video to see what happened during a security event. Now we can review incidents based on the time and date of the suspected event. That cut investigation time from four hours to 15 minutes or less. We can investigate more events and regain more lost assets."

Technology benefits
"If you're trying to transmit large amounts of video data that isn't compressed, you could bring down a corporate network," said Tamara Miller, StorageTek security systems administrator. "StorageTek's Security Surveillance Solution doesn't do that because the software detects how much bandwidth is available and adjusts to work within the IT limits. You can also lock it down to a specific amount of bandwidth to make sure it won't impact your network."