“CCTV, over the years, has risen to be one of the most trusted technology across all works of life providing safety and security across the globe” – By, Mr. Sudhindra Holla, Director, India & SAARC, Axis Communications

1. How CCTVs are helping government authorities in monitoring and managing cities in the times of new normal

The role of CCTV, as generally perceived by people as the crime prevention tool, has drastically evolved over the years. From being a mere crime prevention tool, it has proven to be a critical technology partner aiding government authority in performing difficult task of managing the city and traffic while adhering to the social distancing norms. We are seeing an increased demand in surveillance solutions by government authorities over the recent months with sophisticated technology solutions to help safeguard citizens.

Today, advanced technology solutions infused with CCTVS like cloud-based storage, thermal cameras, wireless technology helps in not just preventing crime but also acts as an effective weapon for the government authorities to better fight the pandemic and ensure that all citizens are abiding the government directed norms of crowd gathering, mask compliance among others. We are closely collaborating with various city authorities like Kolkata Police, Hyderabad, Junagadh, Kolhapur, Nanded to name a few to support them with top notch solutions to keep law and order under check in the current scenario. Our solutions are catered to addressing the current concerns with regards to an expandable storage system, protecting the systems from any potential cybersecurity threats and aiding in a stricter traffic management system.

We have recently announced our partnership with Kolkata Police with whom we have been closely working with to deploy 800+ fixed and PTZ cameras across the city. These installations support them in tracking vehicles, search for loopholes in the traffic management system round the clock besides managing crowd and identifying violators with regards to the ongoing pandemic guidelines and miscreants in public rallies and demonstrations. Moreover, our solution- Axis Zipstream Technology has helped to optimize and expand the bandwidth and storage requirements of the mass video being produced at all times thus aiding them in better tracking, monitoring and analyzing the video feed to detect violations, road congestion, and criminal activities.

2. How is CCTV helping different industry leaders in business resilience – education, retail, manufacturing, critical infrastructure, IT, healthcare etc.

The unprecedented crisis of COVID 19 has put forward a major challenge to all business leaders – maintain business resilience and be the caretaker of the employees. The ever-changing market dynamics have kept them on their feet to cater to the constantly changing situation.

As India is gradually opening up economic activities with some employees starting to get back to work, the topmost priority of all companies is employee safety.  Companies are increasingly leveraging technology to ensure social distancing in the offices. The new normal has made mask compliance, crowding checks and temperature screening mandatory for all employees, and companies are installing high-tech solutions to avoid long queues outside their premises.

We, at Axis Communications, together with our system integrators, have come up with different solutions to support our customers and cater to the ultimate need of the hour. Perfectly suitable for to different verticals like retail, hospitality, commercial, education, healthcare and critical infrastructure.

• People Counting: Our People Counting solution has been specifically curated for measuring and taking faster action to avoid congestion or a queue specially in office cafeterias or lift lobbies and maintain social distancing norms. It gives analytics and valuable insights such as – how many people are in an area at the same time, how they move, where they congregate, and periods of peak occupancy. These insights further enable the management to plan accordingly and take immediate action to make social distancing normal while improving service, operational efficiency, and profitability.
• AXIS Occupancy Estimator:AXIS Occupancy Estimator offers a cost-efficient way to accurately estimate occupancy levels on office premises to understand visitor patterns better and how the space is used. It provides real-time data on how many people are present in the premises or in a certain area at a certain time. This valuable data helps in increasing operational efficiency to maintain the premises and avoid crowding, optimize workforce planning and opening hours and take necessary measures to adhere to the social distancing guidelines
• Alongside, we have collaborated with Application Development Partners(ADP) to offer solutions such as Social Distancing solutions, Touch Free solutions, Body Temperature monitoring solutions, Mask Detection Solutions and Touch Free Attendance systems with Facial Recognition Capabilities to provide a safe working environment for the employees.
• Audio solutions and Public Announcementsolutions are gaining prominence too, in the light of the pandemic, to manage crowd and monitor employees so that they follow and adhere to the social distancing norms better

3. With the increasing sentiments on Chinese products how can CCTV with no back door policy can help regulate India’s data privacy

Cybersecurity has gained prime importance in today’s world. We, at Axis Communications strongly believe in our No Back-Door Policy As a Swedish- engineered product and solutions company, we have always maintained a rigid No Backdoor Policy in all our solutions. Considering the present situation, we trust that CCTV with no back-door policy has an edge in terms of a strong competitive advantage as we are one of the few manufacturers with our very own system-on-chip – ARTPEC Chip. It directly complies with the India’s data privacy policy. This indicates that we have absolute control over each and every transistor in our solutions bringing in trust and a higher level of cybersecurity for our clients. Our no backdoor policy is one of the only network surveillance company in the world that is un-hackable. Thus, customer’s sensitive data, recorded by the camera, does not permit any 3rd party for exploitation. Additionally, it also helps in implementing these installations for national security as Axis solutions guarantees that other countries and foreign law enforcement (FBI, CIA, KIG) cannot surveil Indian citizens by hacking into the systems.

4. How is CCTV helping in market boom despite the pandemic woes

CCTV, over the years, has risen to be one of the most trusted technology across all works of life providing safety and security across the globe. The surveillance sector has formed a strong backbone offering solutions to aid all organizations and industries during this ongoing crisis. We had experienced a mild stagnation during the first few months of 2020, due to lockdown, in sectors such as retail, aviation, and hospitality. However, we have started to witness a high demand as India is opening up again in terms of economic activities, especially for technologies such as People Counting, Occupancy Estimator, Social Distancing solutions, Touch Free solutions, Body Temperature monitoring solutions, Mask Compliance solutions, thermal cameras, facial recognition to deliver a safe experience to the customers.

We also continue to experience a boom in the following sectors – manufacturing, critical infrastructure segments, data centers, healthcare and IT/ITes. The requirement for cameras for round-the-clock monitoring of the employee body temperature and premises to avoid crowd has taken the center stage. We have also seen an increase in government and healthcare projects where the demand for advanced technological solutions in CCTV has led to an exponential growth.

In our latest announcement, we spoke about our collaboration with Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, a medical college under KiiT university, which is a super specialty hospital with 2000 beds. They partnered with us for solutions to help them better monitor and secure their premises as well as further improve their healthcare management. Axis Zipstream technology has been deployed here to optimize bandwidth and installed on an open platform using third party VMS. Moreover, it utilizes our Lightfinder technology that delivers high-resolution, full colour video with a minimum of motion blur even in near darkness. Axis Lightfinder makes dark areas in a scene visible and catches minute details in very low light. The result is excellent image quality without the necessity of an external light source proving to be the largest surveillance system deployment in any healthcare facility in India.

We have also associated with Emami Group in Kolkata and installed about 200 + Fixed and Dome cameras to upgrade safety of the staff and facility and premises of the manufacturing unit to secure their products, employees and monitor processes.

We are also witnessing the demand to slowly moving back to the pre-Covid life with regards to business operations. In fact, most of our customers in commercial settings, smart city, city surveillance, critical infrastructure retail, etc., are investing on surveillance solutions for securing workforce and premise to rightly comply with the norms as people are returning back to work. Cyber security is another major aspect where we are seeing an increasing demand of our solutions as there had been a remarkable increase in cybersecurity threats due to the ongoing pandemic where organizations are opting for more reliable and robust surveillance solutions. With increase in data centres, more so the private data centres, organizations are looking at more robust and unified solutions that secure both premises and people as well as the data.

5. India surveillance market and key sectors/regions where implementations are going up- Roadmap to the in the COVID world  

We remain optimistic in the coming months with the resumption of economic activities amidst Unlock 3.0. We have aligned our growth to the industry’s overall growth as COVID has opened up several opportunities for us while posing certain challenges.

At Axis Communications, one of the first step towards supporting our customers is by briefing our employees to be responsive during this crisis. Internally, we are constantly available on calls, emails and other medium of communication. As part of our global organizational guidelines, being responsive to our customers, partners and distributors and the ecosystem is a prerogative. Along with that we’re keeping the continuity in terms of the technical support and ensuring that tech support is available 24*7 with our online chatbot. So that if there is a challenge with a camera, then the customers should not be impacted. Our tech support team is working from home and trying to resolve the problems to the best of their capacity. However, with reopening of courier services, the problem that we initially witnessed with solving hardware issues had been resolved at a domestic level. We have a team prepared to go to the field and work for any physical repairs, if needed. We have cautiously designed all the precautionary measures to deliver the best even during the lockdown. Even with the international cargo shipment running full swing, along with the manufacturers and Axis configuration and logistics centres, 80-90% of our supply chain has started back to normal. We also have maintained round-the clock correspondence with our distributors and top focused partners while keeping them updated with information to ensure a smooth business continuity. However, we also make sure that our partners and distributors have end-to-end information of the total functioning to maintain transparency, especially in cases where the lead time is more than usual. Starting from the phase 1 of lockdown our priority has been to be transparent in our communication with employees, channel partners, distributors, SI partners and even customers, as part of our business strategy

Coming to our operations and market conditions, we will be continue to offer solutions to organizations for  employee safety and seamless business continuity. We will continue to see a rise in the manufacturing, government, smart city and critical infrastructure segments, where we might see a growth, for securing the premises. Smart city and government projects have been put on hold at the moment due to pending investments. Interestingly, taking into account the market segmentation, we might experience both a dip and a growth mainly because some organizations might opt for cost cutting solutions whereas some companies might prioritize quality. We hold a long heritage of delivering the highest standard products and solutions and hence the cost can be a parameter in the decision making for organizations. However, our Total Cost of Ownership are beneficial for reducing the operating and maintenance costs in the long term. Thus, organizations will be required to re-think in a digital-first approach by evolving and aligning to the industry’s overall goals.