When surveillance gets smarter, storage matters more

Until recently, video surveillance essentially consisted of a camera or cameras pointed at a door, a corridor or a cash counter, quietly recording data that someone would only ever look at after something had already gone wrong. Today, this has evolved into, in some cases, command-and-control centres already knitting together tens of thousands of cameras over hundreds of cities into unified traffic, safety and emergency-response systems. The ambition behind these deployments has shifted from simply capturing footage, to acting on the information in real-time such as flagging an unattended bag, an intrusion or a traffic violation within seconds, not after a complaint is filed days later.