Page 28 - Security Today, April 2017

Educating End Users
Underquoting a system will cause nightmares for everyone
BAy Scott Seraboff
s a provider of storage for video surveillance systems, the hardest part of my job is educating end-users, in- tegrators and consultants on the best way to purchase storage for their systems. Very often you find that a request for quote or email requesting information on
storage provides the vaguest level of information, which allows every storage provider to deliver a different quote on the storage requirement. This is a recipe for disaster, an invitation for storage providers to under quote their systems in the hope of winning jobs, and all but a guarantee that the actual end-user will spend more time and money down the road bringing their storage up to par with what they needed
in the first place.
Storage is a physical thing. It involves mathematics and physics;
if every single storage provider was asked to quote a project with 100 cameras operating at 15 frames per second using three megapixel cameras with 100 percent motion, storing for 30 days, the numbers should be close if not the same. If the answer to the above was 100 TB, then every storage provider should quote approximately 100 TB.
This is unfortunately not often the case. It is more likely that you will see as a part of a storage RFP a requirement shown in the docu- ment as “we have 100 cameras and we’d like to store them for 30 days.” This allows the storage provider unbelievable latitude in deter- mining what amount of storage will be provided. One company, con- servative in its approach, might decide to quote that line by making assumptions—no motion, full frame rate, three-megapixel cameras.
Another company, desirous of winning the job and not caring that the storage they quote will almost certainly not be the storage that’s required, will quote the above request on 75 percent motion, 4CIF and one quarter frame rate. The end-user, seeing a price from the second quote tens of thousands of dollars lower than the price from the first quote, jumps on that quote and says “That’s the winner, that’s our guy because they’re so inexpensive.”
What they don’t realize is that when they fire up their system they will have awful video quality and the slightest change to those quality settings will suddenly mean that the 30 days of retention is reduced to 25. They will run their cameras at a higher frame rate and guess
what. The retention time goes down again. The end-user goes to their integrator and says “Hey I told you I needed 30 days of retention and my systems only giving me 20.” The integrator responds “Well, you accepted the bid. The fact that you want something more or better is not our fault.”
See below for various camera manufactures and the impact various settings have on the bit rates.
For the end-user to be possessed of the right and proper stor- age calculations they must either deliver to the integrator a properly detailed RFQ or be taught by the integrator how to write a detailed RFQ when it comes to storage. As was written earlier it is a matter of physics; you can’t put 40 gallons of water in a 30 gallon bucket no matter how hard you try and the same thing applies to storage. So, the smart thing for the end-user to do when preparing to put out a request for quote on a video surveillance storage system? Make sure that the storage requirement is exceptionally detailed, leaves no room for interpretation, and allows every single storage provider to quote exactly the same things.
See below for the impact of storage required based on various bit rates.
Apples to apples, folks.
For example, if an end-user needs to have a quote delivered for 100 cameras and 30 days of retention, the way they should approach this is to provide significant detail. So, instead of “30 days and 100 cameras,” what they would say is “30 days, 100 cameras, 11 frames per second, camera manufacturer A, running in the crowded station scene, 100 percent motion, low light condition.”
This makes every storage provider look at this information and provide a storage calculation based on the same information. There is no wiggle room. Each storage provider should return to the end- user almost the same number. Any ambiguity is removed by provid- ing of detail. Even if the end-user has not chosen a camera, it would behoove that end-user to pick a camera as a “baseline” device to be used to make sure that every storage quote is the same and that every proposal can be compared apples to apples.
The market for storage today is changing, and it is changing in a fairly dramatic way. Retention times are slowly but surely creep-
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