Page 24 - Security Today, May/June 2019

Secure Your Engines
Large auto dealership in Pacific Northwest relies on open platform video for security and efficient operations
BWy Courtney Dillon Pedersen
ith 17 retail, service and corporate facilities in Portland, Ore., and southwest Washington, Dick Hannah Dealerships has grown to be- come one of the largest automobile companies in the Pacific Northwest. They employ nearly
1,000 people, represent and service 12 automotive brands and main- tain a total daily inventory of about 2,000 new and used vehicles.
Over the years, Dick Hannah Dealerships had installed a piece- meal video camera system at several of its locations. But as the company grew in scale and complexity, managers were looking to upgrade to a comprehensive, unified system to cover all locations in both Oregon and Washington.
Sean McKannay, CIO and digital marketing director, along with Chris Stroebel, service desk manager, are in the management group for Dick Hannah Dealerships. They had worked with Milestone on their previous system and brought them in to assist with the upgrade. Mile- stone, in turn, recommended REECE Complete Security Solutions (REECE) as the security integrator to design and install the company’s new video surveillance system. McKannay and Stroebel worked closely with REECE to integrate the video system into their network, setting up the proper servers and virtual local area networks (VLANs) within the entire Dick Hannah Dealerships IT infrastructure.
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When this upgrade project began in early 2017, there was a mix of standard-resolution legacy video cameras scattered throughout the facilities. Inside the main showroom area of each dealership, there were single-sensor Axis Communications network cameras installed, as well as some PTZ cameras on building exteriors to provide cover- age of the entrances and parking lots.
“The project initially consisted of 60 cameras deploy across 11 dealerships that would be used specifically for management of service and sales. Through our conversations with Dick Hannah Dealerships, we all realized that there were more opportunities to use cameras as a tool to maintain high quality in their everyday business. We dis- covered that there were more ways to leverage the systems they were putting in place that would grant them flexibility and visibility to the various users within the organization,” said Max Saldana, director of strategic accounts at REECE. “As we developed the infrastructure and specifications for their solution, our design engineers partnered closely with Milestone as we used their open platform to pull together both the legacy equipment we decided to keep, as well as the new technologies we were integrating as we expanded their system.”
The Milestone open platform VMS supports the widest choice in network devices, including support for more than 6,000 digital cam- eras, encoders and DVRs from more than 150 different manufactur-
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