Security officers no longer have to be tied to a desk and a wall of monitors when they can view digital surveillance footage on their iPhone or Android while patrolling a facility.

Not exactly Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence, there was a time when security staff members monitoring blurry CCTV video images on CRTs would look through a kind of cone device to cut down on monitor glare.

The New York Police Department will soon launch an all-seeing “Domain Awareness System” that combines several streams of information to track both criminals and potential terrorists.

When your facility is operating in less than optimal conditions such as deserts or similar environments, it can be difficult to find a camera that can take the heat and still provide an adjustable field of vision.

It’s a matter of flexibility, contends Colin Adderley. Bryant Garrett adds integration and scalability, in addition to flexibility, to his needs. For Robert Knell, it’s the perfect bundle: a system providing a wide spectrum of features, granular configuration options, creating a highly flexible and customizable solution.

Just as today’s cell phones have evolved from a basic communication device to a sophisticated multimedia tool, similar shifts have taken place with today’s video surveillance cameras.

For Pat Cooper, location makes a difference. Mobility is the key for Kevin Mykle. Andrew Roberts needed to overcome an old, cumbersome and unreliable system that produced very poor image quality.

For Chris Hugman, it is both simple and complex. “You can better manage bandwidth. You can store security video more efficiently,” he says. But with any tech advance, complexities – some hidden while others are more visible – can make or break an installation.

Many within the surveillance industry are deploying IP video surveillance cameras and networked recorders using the same design and engineering strategies used for building analog CCTV camera and DVR-based systems. On the surface this makes sense: surveillance is surveillance; the fundamental optics and geometry remains the same regardless of the medium. What isn’t the same is how the IP systems operate under day and night conditions.