Physical security concerns are a top priority for executives, and video surveillance technologies play a crucial role in meeting safety and security requirements. In my work with CDW customers, I’ve witnessed a significant shift in recent years as organizations realize that video surveillance is a technology solution and shift responsibility for maintaining video surveillance systems from facilities teams to IT staff. In fact, a recent survey indicates that about half of CDW’s customers have already completed this transition, and others are preparing to hand over responsibility to technology teams.

As IT departments take over these solutions, they want to apply long-standing IT best practices to help them manage video surveillance efficiently and effectively. IT professionals often find themselves inheriting video surveillance systems that use different products at different facilities and may still rely on outdated technologies. To address the limitations of these systems, many organizations are engaging in efforts to modernize, standardize and automate video surveillance.

Surveillance cameras have been in use for decades, and organizations that employ them are able to collect a valuable record of what has happened in the area being watched by their cameras. But organizations that use smart cameras, video management software and data analytics can approach their surveillance video as data and gain far more value from it.

In the past, security teams have been in charge of surveillance, for obvious reasons, but by bringing IT professionals in to make use of the data that surveillance systems create, organizations open up a variety of use cases.

For example, the manufacturing industry has a wide variety of opportunities to apply enhanced video surveillance (EVS) technology to modernize operations, improve efficiency and enhance physical security.

To get started, a company should consider upgrading network connectivity throughout its facilities and connecting IP-based cameras to monitor business processes. By connecting these cameras to the data network and applying analytics software to the video data being collected, a company can unlock a number of valuable capabilities. Let’s take a look at some innovative ways that EVS technology can improve a company’s work.

As localities slowly begin to reopen, technology will be an essential part of the process. The digital infrastructures at the heart of many modern cities may prove critical to keeping the coronavirus at bay. There are many other potential coronavirus-related applications for video in digitally connected cities and the organizations within them. Some, such as using facial recognition for contact tracing, may be controversial, and there are certainly privacy and security issues that municipalities must address. But the fact that a device as simple as a mounted camera combined with powerful analytics software might be used to accomplish in just a few seconds what would otherwise be quite difficult — that’s something localities and other organizations must consider.

Video surveillance technology is now in the middle of the same transformation that revolutionized business telephones 15 years ago. Organizations are moving from old, inflexible analog camera systems to modern and agile IP-based digital video surveillance technology. At the same time, they’re shifting responsibility for these systems from facilities teams to IT groups who are more familiar with providing reliable and consistent digital services to other business units.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to see Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr (who, by the way, is awesome) in concert. We were only a few feet from the stage, but just before the show started, I noticed that the speakers were situated far behind us and aimed away from where we were…