Safety and security are the core of any smart city and hence, before building a smart city, it is essential to plan the blueprint of a safe city. CCTV surveillance is a heart of any safe city project and since the government has rolled out the project, many video analytics solutions providers intend to explore business prospects in this space. Axis Communications, a Swedish network camera solutions company, is betting big on the safe city project. According to Axis Communications, both the Smart city and Safe city projects would be a growth engine for surveillance solution providers in the next 2-3 years.
Sudhindra Holla, Country Manager, Axis Communications, India & SAARC, said that city surveillance would be a key focus area for Axis Communications and the company is in touch with various agencies to deploy solutions for various safe city projects in the country.
“The Smart City project is slowly getting into the framework now. We are seeing a lot of city surveillance and safe city projects taking off. City surveillance will be the biggest growth market from a network video perspective. Axis is definitely a key player in this space. We are engaging with consultants, large SIs and also trying to propagate the knowledge we have in building good safe city and smart city projects. We are also involving our business development teams so that right RFPs come out and there is a level playing field for vendors like us,” Holla told Channel Times.
Axis Communications has deployed safe city solutions in cities such as Bhavnagar, Kolhapur, Aurangabad and Nanded. In order to strengthen its position in the space, the company has also announced a slew of strategic acquisitions such as Citilog, Cognimatics and 2N. In India, the company is focused on accelerating operations with launch of mid-sized end-to-end solutions with a renewed focus on building new partner strategies and vertical sector solutions.
The company recently held Axis Solutions Day 2016 in Mumbai and Delhi to showcased its latest offerings and innovative technologies to its partners and end users. Axis showcased some of its cutting-edge technologies which included ‘Zipstream’, optimized for video surveillance and Axis Perimeter Defender, a high-end video analytics application for intrusion detection and its range of high performance camera for the enterprise market. “The purpose of the event was to educate our channel partners about the trends in the market, Axis offerings and solutions and where Axis is actually heading in the market.”
According to the latest IHS report, the overall network video market is expected to grow 19.5 per cent till 2020 and government, commercial and city surveillance will be the fasted growing segments within the market. While CCTV Surveillance is the major growth area, video analytics is also emerging as the fasted growing business segment for the video solution vendors.
Talking about the latest technological advancements in the camera space, Holla said, “Cameras are getting more powerful and running analytics which can probably gather some intelligence. Secondly, HD is becoming the defacto as people want good image quality, evidence proof videos. And lastly, a lot of recording is happening at the edge. Cameras are coming with SD card slots, SD cards are getting larger in terms of capacity and storage.”
Holla also pointed out that the market, which was earlier dominated by Analog camera solutions is now rapidly shifting towards Network cameras for a better outcome. “We see a trend that people are moving from Analog to IP from 2006 onwards the trend still continues. As we move forward the Analog cameras are going to decline in terms of revenue and IP cameras are going to increase in terms of deployment. Five years down the line, we will see that more than 70 per cent IP cameras of the shipments,” Holla said.
In India, Axis Communication operates though the indirect business model. The company has close to 40 Focused partners who heads a large scale of Axis business. Hale said that the company intends to increase its channel base in the country in the coming months. “We are an indirect Channel oriented company. Therefore, Channel becomes a very important part of our ecosystem. Our aim is to make our channel partners more knowledgeable so that it would help our end customers to buy Axis solutions in a more meaningful way,” Holla said.
“This year we look to expand the channel. We already have around 2500 registered partners and will add more 1000 from a breadth perspective. We are also actively looking for Focused partners”, he added.