Kathy Gibson reports from Synology Open Day in Cape Town – When it comes to surveillance, recording video data is important – but AI-powered search is key to building smarter systems that add value.
Having offering video management and storage for about 18 years, Synology now provides a complete surveillance solution that allows customers to add AI analytics, centralise management and alert tracking, and automate operations.
Louis Ho, solution manager at Synology, explains that customers have traditionally battled with issues including heavy deployment, management complexity and limited searchability.
“The question is what smart security should look like,” she says. “We believe it should be flexible to deploy, simple to manage, and offer fast investigation.”
In the real world, organisations have different requirements and one size of solution does not fit all, Ho points out.
This is why Synology has two deployment offerings in a hybrid cloud ecosystem that gives customers the flexibility to choose the model that best fits their needs.
Surveillance Station
Surveillance Station is an on-premise VMS with centralised management and third-party integration that puts the company in complete control of its environment.
This deployment offers scalable surveillance deployment, with seamless integration of hardware and software and frictionless monitoring.
Because Synology offers third-party integration with thousands of IP cameras, there is no need for customers to replace their existing camera fleets. In addition, the Synology AI features can also be supported from third-party systems.
“Once in place, management is efficient, featuring a customisable dashboard with a centralised view,” Ho explains.
Interactive maps allow alert tracking when there is an event, so users can check incidents immediately without having to search through multiple camera feeds.
A centralised management system can scale up to 5 000 branch servers and up to 50 000 camera feeds, managed with AI from a single interface.
“Managing sites shouldn’t be complicated or expensive,” Ho says. “Which is why we offer cross-site camera and server management.”
Proactive system health monitors let users stay ahead of potential issues.
“The system is built for reliable deployment with Synology high availability,” Ho points out. “For larger deployments, the N+M failover mechanism protects more servers; and the whole system can be backed up to C2 Cloud or hyper backup.
Surveillance365
An on-premise solution works for some customers, but isn’t always the best fit – especially when it comes to deployments like construction sites, retail stores or parking lots, Ho says.
For these organisations, Survellaine365 is a cloud native CSaaS solution offering serverless rapid deployment capability with minimal infrastructure.
AI is used to manage the system, offering a seamless plug-and-play deployment that allows business to monitor it any time and anywhere.
And Surveillance365 is cost-effective, offering a wealth of core surveillance features at no additional cost, with upgrades necessary for only those requiring site permissions.
For additional recording backups, Synology offers two flexible storage options: local storage using the company’s microSD card; or cloud backup to C2 Cloud that can be event-based or continuous, with retention up to 10 years.
Hybrid offering
Ho discloses that hybrid surveillance will soon be offered as well.
“This offers greater flexibility, so customers won’t have choose one architecture over the other.”
The AI advantage
“Our vision beyond video management,” Ho says. “We are building a complete surveillance ecosystem.”
Synology is introducing its PoE (power over Ethernet) switch and will soon add more management that expands AI functions.
Customers can pair a Synology camera with a Synology NAS to utilise AI, but they can also pair any camera with DVA services to add advanced AI services to their surveillance systems.
AI services go beyond the people and vehicle detection to include a wealth of smart detection capabilities.
“But managing the system is only part of the challenge,” Ho says. “Finding the right evidence can be a major exercise today.
“We are helping customers to end time-consuming manual searches by enabling natural language search that can find evidence in seconds.”
Synology solutions also support semantic video search, attribute search and the ability to find repeated objects.
“These solutions are designed for environments where every second matters,” Ho says. “AI helps to build more security and enables companies to make better decisions.”