Cisco Aquires SyPixx 78
illeism writes "Forbes reports that Cisco is getting into the video surveillance business. From the article,"Cisco made the acquisition to capitalize on the trend that has been underway which is moving video surveillance from analog to IP.""
Cisco's reasoning (Score:5, Informative)
"If you can digitize all video, you can record it, timestamp it and instantaneously get access to video across the IP network much more efficiently than having to send an actual tape," said Marthin De Beer, a vice president in Cisco's Emerging Market Technologies Group. "It also lets people coordinating a disaster halfway across the country to get live video feeds from cameras connected to an IP network, so they can see what's happening."
In addition, it makes sense for businesses that have already embarked on consolidating their networks to decide to carry all of their corporate data and voice traffic over an IP network. Cisco also provides storage area networking gear, which is essential for customers who must store all the video.
Personally, I'd like to see more development of sousveillance [wikipedia.org]. IMHO, the solution to the problem of "Who watches the watchers?" isn't to ban watching, but to make everybody a watcher. It'd be great to have a publically-uploadable website designed to facilitate the coordination of images and video for events and places of concern.
SyPixx (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the SyPixx web site [sypixx.com] for more about the products that Cisco is aquiring, or download this PDF catalog [sypixx.com].
Re:I don't think IP Cameras are there yet (Score:1, Informative)
The other thing to consider too, is that CCTV cameras have a wide variety of generally interchangeable lenses (C or CS mounts), whereas most IP cameras do not have interchangeable lenses.
Further, cameras often get vandalised. It's much cheaper to replace a $90 analog camera than a $1,300 IP camera.