 Hi, this is your host, Sopil Bhartya, and welcome to another episode of TFR Let's Talk. And today we have with us once again, Hari Avila, EMEA Technical Director at Scios Technology. Hari, it's great to have you back on the show. Great to be back, Sopil. And today we are going to talk about high availability for video surveillance management services. Talk a bit about what are these services and also what do you mean by these services? Video surveillance management system or a VSM, it's generally a combination of hardware and software that allows organizations to monitor and manage video footage, which has been captured by sort of various cameras that they might have placed in various locations. So generally these types of systems are designed to do some basic things. They record video images and any associated audio. They can then sort of store those images where required. And then they can also be potentially used to sort of go back and analyze that video data if required. So beyond those sort of basic capabilities, what a lot of vendors do in this area, they add an array of additional features to their solutions. So a lot of these solutions today, they will also provide capabilities like remote viewing, various of different types of playback capabilities, and even sort of aspects like sort of real-time alerts of specific activities. So some of these video surveillance systems, they're becoming sort of extremely sophisticated where they're now also leveraging elements of AI. So for example, some of these systems can detect if a person may have been injured or has collapsed, for example, for whatever reason, and then can automatically alert the relevant authorities. I was also talking to a vendor quite recently who was talking about an example where the system has been designed to detect any altercations between people in a public space and then alert the police, if necessary, automatically as well. So the level of intelligence in these systems is actually sort of quite impressive. So when we look at these systems, what kind of high availability need is there for these systems and services? So when you think about these types of capabilities and features that the primary goal of the VSM is to firstly deliver and enhance level of security, improve operational efficiency, and also aid in any sort of potential investigations that might need to be conducted for various reasons. So these VSM systems, they end up becoming very, very critical to how an organization operates. So aspects such as systems high availability or HA, these become really crucial. You have a server where your VSM is running that has HA, that's gonna ensure that firstly and foremost, the system is always up and running. And secondly, it's also gonna ensure that we can provide those critical video surveillance services to users, even in the event of a hardware or software failure. Thanks for explaining what these VSM systems are. Now let's talk about what is the need for high availability for VSM systems? How do building managers or facilities, they didn't mind if they need these, high availability for these systems? Well, when you think about it, there are several factors that buildings managers can begin focusing upon and sort of begin planning around. And the determination sort of primarily comes down to that the criticality of the organization's surveillance operations and the impact of downtime on those operations. So the type of factors that sort of come to mind and sort of certainly where I would sort of start my thinking at is firstly, and I appreciate this as a broad term, but you wanna think about business continuity as a whole. So in other words, you wanna consider what extent of availability is required to support the continuous surveillance operations and to ensure the safety of people and property. So I would say, we wanna ask ourselves, is this a system that needs to be always on or is it only required for certain periods? Yeah, what are the risks to the organizations if we don't run an always on system? So sort of asking questions of that nature are gonna sort of help determine the systems required service level agreement or SLAs, as we say. And then you wanna also consider, what exactly does this system need to comprise of? So when we're talking about video surveillance, how many cameras do we need in the property that we're trying to secure? Yeah, and again, that's gonna be driven by the size of the facility that needs to be secured. And then there's further sort of technical questions that you can ask yourself. What type of video resolution is needed for the image captures? And that's an aspect of the video surveillance and then has a knock on impact on the kind of storage capacity we need for the system as well. So it's those types of factors that will sort of directly impact the demands on the system's resources itself. And then beyond that swap, there's some questions that you need to ask yourself which someone sort of go without saying. We talked about high availability a lot for a long time and generally when you're having that kind of discussion, the other topic that kind of falls into that what's the cost of downtime when we're trying to sort of protect these systems? So facilities and building managers, they want to think about the cost of losing surveillance footage or having an unresponsive system. So again, what are the questions we need to ask ourselves? Is the cost of downtime gonna have an impact on revenue for the organization? Are there any legal liabilities associated with the event? Is there any potential damage to reputation? So these are the kind of things that need to be thought about and the kind of questions that need to be asked. And there's further aspects as well. If you really want to go deeply into it, you need to start thinking about compliance requirements. Are there any legal or regulatory requirements for surveillance systems? Surveillance systems have to think about aspects like recording retention periods or incidence response times. When we talk about high availability, Swap, you and I have talked about this a lot. We talk about system reliability. Is the history and track record of a current video surveillance system in terms of stability, reliability, and performance? Is that good enough? Or are these metrics that can be improved upon with a high availability solution? It's safe to say that. When you think about high availability, it will improve your overall system performance. We've seen that in a lot of the deployments that we see at Siles. When a server fails or the video surveillance management software suffers a fault, if you don't have a high availability solution, the recovery of that system could be really slow. And that's going to cause a delay in service or an impact on system performance. On the other hand, a high availability server automatically switches to a backup server, ensuring that the system continues to operate with minimal disruption. So this improves the overall performance and the overall reliability of the VSM. And importantly, it provides a better user experience as well. H.A. is a crowded market, crowded space. What are the criteria that they should look at when they are looking at choosing a high availability solution for their VSM services? There's certainly several factors here again that generally need close consideration. Certainly, we spoke about it earlier. Make sure that the solution of choice is able to meet the availability requirements that you've set for yourself. So once you've set your SLAs and you understand the target that needs to be achieved, make sure the H.A. solution of choice has the capability to meet those targets. It almost again goes without saying, but it's quite easy to sort of overlook some of those aspects. When you're looking at any solution, really cost comes into the conversation. So evaluate the cost of the different high availability solutions, but also make sure you take into account the cost of any additional hardware or any additional software and even maintenance costs that fit around that conversation and make sure we choose a solution that fits the budget. There is an important point to make here, Swap, on the subject of maintenance. Irregular maintenance of any VSM system is necessary to ensure the system operates optimally. So with a high availability system, the need for maintenance windows is actually reduced because the system can continue to operate even during maintenance periods. So this is going to save a lot of time and a lot of cost associated with maintenance and system downtime activities. One of the other aspects I would really pay close attention to is also scalability. We want to choose a solution that can scale up and down as the needs change. So you can avoid having to replace the high availability solution in the future. So you want to choose a H.A. solution that can grow and evolve alongside your VSM infrastructure. Whereas the demand for video surveillance grows, systems must be able to scale to meet the increasing needs of the users. And high availability ensures that the system can continue to operate even as, say, for example, new cameras are added to the system or the user base grows. So that enables the system to scale smoothly without disruption. And there's further points as well. Yeah, we want to think about an element of future proofing as well. Yeah, for example, you might be running the VSM on local premises today, but in the future, you may need to migrate that to a hosted environment or to the cloud even. So will the high availability solution of choice be able to make that migration to the new platforms with your VSM applications and with any associated databases? If there is a consideration to move to the cloud, does the cloud provider deliver the high availability SLAs that you're looking for as well? So that's something to be very mindful about if you're looking at that kind of migration. And there's other common examples as well. Yeah, we want to think about ease of use of the solution. We want to make sure that the IT teams who are managing the solution can easily deploy, configure, and manage the solution on a day-to-day basis. For larger scale deployments where VSM could be running in and amongst other systems, we want to make sure that integration is also another key attribute for the HHA system as well. And there's other things that you would expect as well, Swap. We want to think about technical support. Yeah, consider the level of technical support the HHA vendor provides and choose a solution that provides reliable and responsive support when needed. Yeah, the value of any good high availability solution is not just about the product and the technology, but it's also about the level of technical support that underpins that technology as well. So any good high availability solution should also be coupled with a global 24x7 support network. And then lastly, and this is something that's not necessarily going to apply to all situations and all scenarios, but think about disaster recovery. You evaluate the DR capabilities of the HHA solution and choose a solution that provides effective protection against various types of failures. So if you think about it, if you have your systems managed from one location, yeah, that's going to be helpful in terms of managing cost efficiencies. But if that location is compromised and is hit by a power outage or a natural disaster, having a DR site to switch over to, that's going to be really essential. So the need for a DR site, that's going to be mainly driven by those original SLAs that you've set around the VSM solution itself. Can you also talk about as initially, you're talking about, how facilities determine whether they need high availability solution or not. From your perspective, in large facilities, what kind of systems or services are considered critical to the operation of their organization? I mean, as you would expect in larger facility swap, we're not just addressing VSM systems. Yeah, there's going to be a myriad of systems that are all integrated with each other. And the more significant the facility, the more extensive these systems and the more tightly integrated they're going to be. So many of these systems, they fall under that umbrella of a more comprehensive and wider buildings management system architecture or BMS architecture, which in addition to video surveillance systems, this is also going to include all sorts of other systems as well. Power supply and backup systems, fire suppression and alarm systems, heating, ventilation, air conditioning. Yeah, you can then extend that to things like elevator and emergency lighting, access control to the building and the facilities. And even things like water supply, waste management, communication networks and emergency communication systems, medical and emergency response systems. And then also things like data centers and IT infrastructures as well. So the list is almost endless, but the specific systems and services that are considered critical, they're going to vary depending upon the type of organization and the type of operations that it needs to run. Oh, let's talk a bit about some use cases or if you can talk a bit about the kind of customers you have worked with to enable them help deploy VSM solutions. So here at Sios, we've had the opportunity to work with a wide range of organizations where that safety of people and that safety of property is of the utmost importance. So we find ourselves speaking with organizations such as sort of public transport systems and metro systems, specifically where VSMs are deployed in areas where large numbers of people congregate, such as the train station concourses and the platforms and those types of areas. For the same reasons, we've worked with several different airports around the world. We've also provided HA for video surveillance systems in large sports stadiums and large sports arenas as well. And then also in places like shopping malls around the globe as well. So as you can imagine, video surveillance, it's a vital part of these types of infrastructures. But as we sort of touched upon earlier, it's not only about protecting the VSM itself. It's also about integrating with the wider BMS and delivering high availability for the complete infrastructure. Harry, thank you so much for taking time out today and discuss this topic with me. And as usual, I would love to have you back on the show again, thank you. Thank you Swap, that was great.