Cloud-based video surveillance on the rise with potential for exponential growth

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

According to IMS Research, the world market for cloud-based video surveillance, also known as Video Surveillance as a Service, or VSaaS for short, is only going to continue to grow in coming years, further helping the expansion of the global Big Brother surveillance grid.

Considering the rise of VSaaS with the overall trend of increasing surveillance, voluntary citizen spying, the announcement that internet service providers will begin monitoring on all internet activity, and the ever-expanding behemoth Department of Homeland Security, it appears that our society is continuing to go deeper down the rabbit hole of the paranoid surveillance state.

In 2011 alone, the market was in the neighborhood of $500 million, which represents an increase of 25 percent over 2010.

“Growth in the VSaaS market is a result of increasing demand from consumer, small-to-medium businesses, and government end users,” Sam Grinter, a market analyst with IMS Research, said.

“Also, an increasing number of entrants to the market has accelerated growth of service development, marketing presence, and is also creating a more competitive environment. All of which means that VSaaS is set to grow significantly faster for 2012 onwards,” he added, according to Government Security News.

VSaaS is appealing to the Big Brother types out there because it can include real-time alerts, self-monitoring, integrated analytics and off-site storage.

The almost endless number of features available as a part of VSaaS means that it could be used in an unimaginably wide range of applications, further enabling the American surveillance state and those around the world who are also picking up on the trend of citizen spying and constant domestic surveillance.

VSaaS is also being pushed under the guise of the “peace of mind” created by having cameras constantly watching your loved ones. Personally, I think if my loved ones actually loved me, they wouldn’t want to keep a robotic eye on me at all times.

There is also the capability of integrated security systems which could utilize both on- and off-site storage and monitoring of the video feeds at a remote, central location.

Let us not forget, VSaaS would be a great way for the Department of Homeland Security to expand their already ludicrously massive domestic operations, further keeping a watchful eye over Americans, especially those who care about their privacy or those who simply display a wide range of common bodily movements.

According to IMS Research, the key problem holding back widespread roll out of this new style of surveillance is, currently, price.

The costs to keep up the infrastructure required to provide VSaaS to customers is still relatively high. Currently, monthly camera subscriptions range from $5-30 per camera depending on what exactly is included in the service.

“For VSaaS to become more widely adopted, the market needs to resolve a number of barriers,” Grinter said. “For consumers and commercial users, the price per camera needs to drop significantly and installation must be simpler. Additional requirements for commercial users include new features and technologies, such as business intelligence functions, that increase the return on investment of using a VSaaS solution.”

The 2012 VSaaS report from IMS Research shows that preliminary findings point to even stronger growth potential than was originally projected.

Currently the major variable in the success of this technology is the ability of the providers of the service to overcome the above factors.

IMS Research predicts that if VSaaS providers can beat these barriers, the world marked could bring in over $1 billion by 2014.

I would say that this could be even more if the government takes a liking to it and offers some kind of incentive for businesses and private homes to integrate the technology and have the monitoring also mirrored to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or National Security Agency (NSA) servers.

After all, the NSA is almost finished with their insanely expensive and ludicrously massive data center which would be perfectly suited to handling such large volumes of data.

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This article first appeared on End the Lie.

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