Surveillance's emerging role in retail and marketing

While many people think of surveillance technology being used by the government to combat crime and terrorism, retail outlets are increasingly using advanced surveillance technology for both theft prevention and for marketing purposes. As surveillance technology increases cameras' ability to analyze scenes and count moving objects, Schatt says it will allow stores to look for how many people spend time in certain areas to determine which areas are prime real estate sections, and also to see whether sales and promotions attract new customers.

"One big reason that the market for surveillance software is growing so large is that it has a lot of sales and marketing implications," he says. "I've seen technology that can track how people in a store look at a display, that will track traffic patterns in a store. This opens up video surveillance not just to security but to sales and marketing as well."

Troha says that surveillance equipment can also help stores with staffing issues, as the cameras will be able to provide stores with accurate data on when peak hours occur on which days. Similarly, says Hampapur, the cameras can detect when there are several people standing in line at a certain area where there are too few cashiers and can alert management for extra help.

"This kind of security infrastructure can actually make money for businesses rather than just prevent losses," says Troha."This is critical for our business model, because if we can use security infrastructure to enable enterprises to derive more revenue, then there's lot more traction in using surveillance analytics to gather business intelligence."

Indeed, Schatt notes, responsibility for maintaining and deploying surveillance systems is increasingly shifting away from companies' security departments and over to IT departments. And as surveillance capabilities and applications continue to grow in the coming years, effective surveillance systems will need to be run by people with in-depth knowledge of software capabilities in order to work effectively.

"Now that we're getting more digital surveillance equipment, surveillance is starting to move into purview of the IT department," says Schatt. "Whereas the old systems were all analog, we're starting to get systems now that are all digital. This is interesting, because there has traditionally been a disconnect between security folks and IT people, and this is going to help break that down."