Discover How Cisco Video Surveillance Can Benefit Your Business

Make the most of video system investments and gain new security capabilities with Cisco Video Surveillance solutions. Scalable Web-based software and broadcast-quality hardware integrate with existing analog and network-centric systems to enable faster incident response and resolution.

Cisco Video Surveillance software and hardware enables the capture, transmission, viewing, recording, archiving and management of analog and IP video sources. Engineered with network and video expertise, Cisco video surveillance standards-based products:

- Deliver easy, secure access to live and recorded video

- Provide excellent scalability, reliability, and availability

- Simplify deployment and control of new security applications

- Lower operational costs

- Protect existing physical security systems investments

- Support multi-vendor device and applications interoperability

- Enable a smooth migration from analog to digital to full IPAs a result, Cisco provides solutions that can be deployed in a wide-range of scenarios, including:


Large Scale










- Hundreds to thousands of cameras

- Full motion video, high resolution images

- 24x7 video storage

- Analog and network-based systems

- Typical applications include airports, casinos, city centers, and universities



Low Camera Density





- On-site and remote video monitoring

- Motion-triggered recording

- Local and remote storage

- Integration with other security and business systems

- Typical applications include schools, retail stores, and hospitals



Remote Locations





- Remote web-access to live and recorded video

- Bandwidth-sensitive applications

- Mobile and wireless deployments

- Typical applications include border controls, pipelines, remote facilities, and roadways

When 720 GB of backbone just isn’t enough… start looking at the Ferrari of switching! Introducing the NEXUS 7000

The Nexus 7000 was unveiled recently by Cisco touting undoubtedly the fastest switch ever made. The 7000 has been designed to give 15 Terabytes per second backbone speed with redundancy previously only seen in large-scale military programs. It’s new revolutionary OS called NX-OS will replace the current Cisco IOS as the most robust OS yet.

The 7000 was created for the increasing requirements and bandwidth consumption of Video over IP. Conferencing, IP Surveillance, and YouTube have caused an inordinate amount of bandwidth to start crossing the wire, and the datacenter isn’t prepared for 30 frames, 4SIF video to flow to multiple streams. The 6500 series of switches currently supports 720 GBs of backbone. Take an HD stream of 45 MB/s and multiply that out. You can support about 16,000 total connections through your core before the stream starts to degrade. However, with the Nexus 7000, that number increases to over 333,000 Unicast streams.

Now I know what most of you are saying, this switch is overkill. But for a few of you out there, you have no choice but to look at the 7000 to increase your capabilities. Look for service providers to start rolling these out towards the end of this year and when the world starts to adopt a fully-fledged Video over IP system, this will be the backbone it’s carried on. When true GB just isn’t enough, and 10 GB is starting to look a little slow, then 40 GB and 100 GB networks are the requirement and the 7000 series will be the first to scale to that degree.

All of the characteristics of the 7000 can be seen on the Cisco website at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9402/index.html

Save 32 minutes of your life today!

A study completed by Sage Research shows that on average, employees lose 32 minutes per day trying to track down another employee in their very own company. On an employee who works for 10 years, that equates to 2 months of time spent tracking down coworkers. For a $50,000 a year employee, that’s a little over $800 per year and with 100 employees that’s $80,000 annually spent by their employer for this remedial task. Not to include the productivity and opportunity losses based on competitors beating you to the punch. In a time of connectivity such as this, why are we spending a couple months to find someone?

So what can you do to save the time, and what’s it going to cost? Cisco has a solution.

Presence Server is being utilized as an integrated platform for Voice, Video, Conferencing, Instant Messaging, and Availability signaling. By using a small applet on your PC, you can instantly see the status of other employees in the organization and more importantly instantly collaborate with them. Across the isle, or cross the globe, you can now find a person and get the information you need faster.

“Presence and mobility applications, including Cisco Unified Presence, provide presence and state information for features such as Cisco IP Phone Messenger and clients such as Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, Cisco Unified CallConnector for Microsoft Office for Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express users, and the Cisco Unified Mobile Communicator, and let users know which co-workers are available to them and by which device-wired or wireless-at any given time. In addition, Cisco Unified Mobility for Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified CallConnector Mobility for Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express help enable "single-number reach" capability. The Sage Research study revealed that device-aware presence capabilities save an average of 32 minutes daily. Moreover, 50 percent of users claimed to save 15 to 30 minutes per day, and 47 percent reported that they save 30 to 60 minutes per day.”

Another Cisco tool is their new Single-Number-Reach approach to telephony. Imagine having one single telephone number on your business cards. This number is your office DID (Direct number) and it is connected to your home office phone, cell phone, car phone, soft phone, or any other phone where you want it to ring to. The best part is that all the phones ring at one time and if you don’t answer, the Voicemail at your office is the only Voicemail that will ever have to be checked. And of course with Unified messaging, you can pick those up on your phone, email, or even a webpage.

So what does it cost? A heck of lot less than $80,000…

So what is you time worth. What would you do with an hour a week, or a week a year? Spend it with your kids, add more sales, or just take an extra hour nap? You decide!

References: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns394/ns165/ns152/net_implementation_white_paper0900aecd8041064f.html

Business Continuity Planning

Natural disasters like Katrina and the recent fires in Southern California have underscored the need for business continuity planning. According to U.S. government agencies, up to 40% of businesses fail to reopen following a disaster.

Management has a responsibility to recover from such incidents in the minimum amount of time and the least amount of disruption to the business as possible.

Business continuity plans (BCP) are required to ensure that key business functions continue operating in the event of an emergency - not just IT systems. It is the responsibility of each division manager (HR, Customer Service, Manufacturing, etc.) to own and maintain the BCP as it applies to personnel, processes, and business operations within their areas of responsibility.

Business continuity planning has 5 major elements:

Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment
Recovery Solution Planning
Implementation
BCP Testing
Maintaining the plan

An essential element of BCP is the business impact analysis and risk assessment. If this first step is not completed properly the rest of the plan is likely flawed. Business impact analysis and risk assessment involves the process of identifying the critical functions necessary for the organization to continue business operations, assessing potential risks to the organization, defining and measuring controls in place to reduce exposure, and evaluating the cost of such controls.

Recovery solution planning takes into account attributes including the number of locations, distribution of personnel, nature of business, interdependency of processes, disaster scenarios planned for, and requirements for alternative sites. Minimally, your recovery plan should cover personnel, payroll, Accounts Payable and Receivable, and shipping.

Step three is implementation. It includes training the response team, preparing the documentation, collecting and storing supplies, creating emergency authorization procedures, and preparing the alternate work site. Basically, you’ll be doing everything in preparation for executing the next step - testing the plan.

Testing the BCP is often viewed as too much of a disruption to business to be valuable. If you think testing is too much of a disruption to your business, imagine the chaos, impact on customers, shareholder and public opinion, and impact on revenue when you encounter an event that you aren’t prepared for. Testing your plan ensures that your solution assumptions are correct, that the plan doesn’t have operational gaps, and that you have practice at managing through an event.

Businesses aren’t static and neither should be your plan. As your business evolves through mergers and acquisitions, new products, and new suppliers, your BCP should also evolve. Maintenance of your BCP is critical to how well your organization is prepared to handle the inevitable.

Additional resources:
http://www.drj.com/
http://www.ready.gov/business/plan/planning.html
http://www.dsw.net/

About the author
Rocky Vienna, CISA, is President and Founder of the Vienna Technology Group, LLC. Vienna Technology Group is an IT management and business consulting firm focused on IT Governance, Strategic Planning, IT Compliance, IT Outsourcing, and Business Continuity Planning.

Calling all IT managers, one new thing to add to your list of responsibilities... Surveillance!

Written by: Ryan Peterson, Director of Intelligent Facility, DSW

If you were like me, your world revolved around networks, servers, and the security of those systems. But then the world decided to start converging all of those systems to one cable wire, so we added a new responsibility called VoIP. That ship has sailed and if you haven't been on it, you are missing out on application convergence...very cool stuff...

But now, post 9/11 mentality has brought out major concerns about corporate security which was once a problem only regarded by federal government and defense.

So what now, new names enter the market that you and I have to begin thinking about and talking to. Names like Pelco, Bosch, NVT, Sony, Panasonic, and milestone to name a few with products like IP cameras, Megapixel cameras, matrix switches, baluns, and Digital Video Recorders (DVRs).

If you’re not used to questions like; A). What lens will give me the right clarity for this distance? B). What is the difference between identification placement vs. overview placement, or C). What the process is to get text to overlay on the video, or next to it? Then this new game might stump you... Or at least add a new area to study up on. Either way, expect to start working with your company's security department a lot more.

This might be a good time to announce what DSW is doing to join this conquest. DSW has added an Intelligent Facility practice to our list of offerings. Over many months of planning, hiring the right team, training with the right vendors and doing all of the heavy lifting of research about all of these products, we are now 1 of very few companies certified to sell Cisco's Physical Security products, and coupled with the correct cameras, we can bring to life the best in high quality or low-cost depending on your needs.

It's time to start thinking about how surveillance is going to impact your network, because it will. Quality of Service (QoS) is a main concern as is bandwidth and DVR placement. To learn more, contact your DSW representative today and we will schedule a no cost consultation.