International. Genetec announced that it has developed Federation-as-a-Service (FaaS) to enable organizations with distributed security systems to centralize their monitoring, while reducing the operational costs associated with monitoring and maintaining systems located across multiple sites.
The FaaS cloud-based service is now integrated with GenetecTM's Security Center 5.3 (SR 2), and can monitor events, status information, and alarms from video devices, doors, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras, and intrusion panels, among all participating sites in real time, while allowing independent sites to maintain the autonomy of their local system.
Because GenetecTM is responsible for hosting and managing FederationTM infrastructure in the cloud, FaaS helps reduce on-site hardware, and simplifies the management and maintenance required to manage a centralized monitoring system. This is one of the reasons why the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) decided to use FaaS to ensure the safety of athletes and spectators at the 2015 Special Olympics World Games (LA2015).
During the twelve days of the games, the LAPD took advantage of FaaS to connect its command center to monitor the more than 400 cameras that were distributed across multiple sites, which included the University of Los Angeles, California (UCLA), the University of Southern California (USC, in the Staples Center complex and the LA Live entertainment complex, along with other sports complexes and event venues in Los Angeles and the surrounding city of Long Beach.
Many of these sites already had their own Security Center, and were managed by their respective security agents and police, so the installation of the service was very easy, since no additional servers were needed in the localities, and the cloud-based FederationTM function facilitated a transparent connection throughout all the distributed locations.
Controlling access to systems and maintaining the privacy of certain cameras was crucial to forming a successful alliance between everyone involved. FederationTM as a Service trained everyone involved to define which cameras they were going to share, who would have access, how long ago the operators were authorized to extract recorded video, and what level of control over the PTZ cameras the Los Angeles Police had.
As the LAPD had to be cautious and not overload the network in the command center, it also had to control the broadcast quality of the video when multiple cameras were being used, thus limiting the required bandwidth .
"Without GenetecTM's Security Center and FederationTM as a Service we would not have been able to ensure we had the same level of attention during the Special Olympics World Games. We were able to quickly install a centralized monitoring headquarters that connected us to the cameras installed throughout each of the locations. GenetecTM was instrumental in our Unified Command Center working as well as it did, and without the GenetecTM solutions in place we would not have been able to function as efficiently during those 12 days," said Dennis Kato, Los Angeles Police Commander (LAPD) of the Special Olympics World Games Organizing Committee.
