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„With Qognify VMS we are futureproofing our surveillance network for many years to come.“ Dan Gilbert, Cape May County Network Administrator
Responsibility falls to Cape May County Network Administrator Dan Gilbert, who has managed and engineered the government’s entire operations network since 2005.
He explained, “Every camera needs to be fully operational and recording non-stop, anywhere the public might be – from the playgrounds in our zoo to libraries, airports and squares. Our video management system is critical to the performance of the entire network.”
Cape May County’s 600 cameras are all IP based and are mostly from Axis, with a small number from Sony and other manufacturers. These cameras are connected to 11 servers and consume approximately 2.5 petabits of storage, with all recordings stored for at least 60 days.
Cape May County has trusted Hexagon to meet its video management needs for more than 10 years. Gilbert explained how this long-term partnership began:
“We visited a nearby utility company to see how they managed video surveillance, and we were impressed with what we saw,” he said. “The fact that they were at relying on the Hexagon’s NiceVision solution to monitor their nuclear power plants gave us the confidence to use the same solution.”
Gilbert said he evaluated several VMS solutions, but has always preferred Hexagon.
“We want to be sure we have the best system and offer the best value for money to the government. I tested many other VMSes, and even the early versions of NiceVision outperformed many of them,” he said.
The most recent upgrade began in early 2022 when the County became one of the first entities in the world to deploy Qognify VMS, an enterprise-class, next-generation open architecture VMS that delivers low total cost of ownership, business process support, advanced ecosystem integrations and cloud readiness.
Qognify VMS meets all of the County’s key requirements.It can handle 24/7 operations and is easy to manage, maintain and operate. Gilbert pointed to a major performance advantage of the new system, which has already been deployed at two of the six sites.
“One of the biggest advantages of Qognify VMS is that we can control everything from a single console. Video configuration, administration and the ability to view live videos are now all in one place,” he said.
“Qognify VMS works so smoothly,” he continued. This smoothness also extends to the quality of video playback. “It doesn’t matter if you’re watching video footage from a day or a week ago. We have extremely smooth, jitter-free frame-by-frame playback from every camera on the network. It made a huge difference in clarity and image quality.”
This improvement is even more impressive considering the bandwidth challenges of video networks, as the County operates a virtual private ethernet line and some areas experience bandwidth speeds as low as 20 Mbps.
Given the size of the county’s infrastructure, the upgrade to Qognify VMS took a phased approach, moving site by site.
“Due to the size of our infrastructure, it can feel like we are running our own little country,” said Gilbert.
The full transition to Qognify VMS is expected to be completed by the end of the year, while the county is simultaneously increasing the number of cameras in operation.
Looking forward, the relationship between Cape May County and Hexagon is strong as Qognify VMS provides additional functionality. This includes powerful two-way integrations with access control and intrusion detection systems as well as video analytics.
Additionally, as bandwidth increases across the county, there is opportunity to store video data in the cloud using Qognify Cloud Bridge to reduce the hardware footprint, achieve even greater resiliency and scale the already significant storage requirements as needed.
Cape May County is the southernmost county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. With much of the county located on a scenic peninsula with 30 miles of sandy beaches, the year-round population of 95,000 swells to nearly 1 million in the summer months.
