Vertical Markets

Bulgari case study

by Mark Rowe

Since opening its doors in Via Condotti, Rome 130 years ago, Bulgari has grown from a jewellery designer to a global luxury brand. Its collections of fine jewellery, watches, accessories, fragrances, and resorts can be found all over the world. Bulgari has 21 stores, and two main offices in North and South America. The company also has stores in a dozen places around the UK.

Bulgari’s headquarters in Rome decided to standardise on the Genetec Security Center software to centralise video and access control monitoring for all its sites,

The retailer was dealing with a mix of digital video recorders (DVRs), which delivered the firm admits grainy video quality; and it had disparate access control systems at sites. Extracting video and setting access control privileges or rules required personnel onsite, a time consuming and tedious process.

Jointly headed by Edo Tami, IT Director at Bulgari, and Micheal Mahon, Security Manager at Bulgari, the migration to Security Center began with Nino Zeccardo, Division VP, Director of Enterprise Level Systems from SW24 Security Solutions, a full-service Genetec-certified installer of electronic and physical security services based in New York. According to Mahon: “Security Center is a single platform for IP video surveillance and access control, so we can rely on one vendor and installer for multiple needs. Together, Genetec and SW24 Security Solutions have been more responsive and more professional than all of our past providers.”

Central control

The initial installation began at a store in California. Genetec products now can be found at three other locations in the United States, one in South America, plus a travelling exhibition which marks the brand’s 130-year anniversary.

All store systems are remotely accessed from a central location in the United States, and federated back to Rome, allowing headquarters to manage and maintain all systems as one platform, regardless of time zones.

At each location, Omnicast, the IP video surveillance system of Security Center manages about 15 Arecont Vision IP cameras, proving the high-resolution video as required by jewellers. Synergis, the IP access control system of Security Center oversees numerous HID Global EDGE EVO access controller-readers on all doors and sensitive areas within offices and stores, and even the jewellery display cases.

Zeccardo said: “When a client asks to see a piece of jewellery, the employee will swipe their access control card to open the case. Other jewelers are still using keys, but that’s a hassle and a huge vulnerability if a key is lost or stolen. Bulgari is able to simply deactivate the card.”

Configuring access control privileges and rules has also been simplified with Security Center, the companies report. Enterprise-level features such as Active Directory Integration helps Bulgari speed up enrolment and automatically assign new employees to card-holder groups with specific access privileges, while the granularity of Security Center enables the simultaneous functioning of multiple rules to better secure vulnerable zones, drawers or safes.

Tami said: “Instead of setting access privileges at each reader, we are now able to centrally manage all of our systems and configure our devices and our cardholders’ access rights at any location from a central command centre. Employees are granted access various areas based on their role at the company.”

Investigations, maintenance

According to Mahon, pulling video or activity reports has been effortless: “It was just very straightforward and simple to navigate. I can basically plug into the system 24/7 and pull up any material that I need.”

“The workload has drastically reduced for me in maintaining this new system. It’s extremely reliable and the Health Monitoring feature notifies us immediately if a device goes offline or someone tampers with a camera. It’s just very easy for us to use.”

Expanding on the platform

While the move to Security Center has just begun, new stores in Panama, Toronto, Cancun, and Miami are next on the migration schedule. According to Mahon: “Expanding and connecting all our systems is the benchmark we want to be able to reach and I can’t wait for the day that we have everything under one umbrella.”

In the meantime, Bulgari is using its new IP video system to pilot shopping behaviour analytics from Prism Skylabs, extending system function for other retail applications.

“Security Center is an excellent product, extremely reliable, and the greatest advantage for Bulgari is having that centralized and unified model. It’s unique to Security Center and that’s the main reason why we chose it,” added Tami.

Infrastructure

Bulgari Corporation of America chose Arecont Vision MegaBall megapixel cameras with wide dynamic range at 100db and H.264 compression to achieve high-resolution video while minimising bandwidth. HID Global EDGE EVO EHRP40-K controller-readers were installed on all the doors and jewellery display cases in stores and offices. Video streams over a dedicated network to local servers at each site, or in some cases, the Genetec SV-PRO, network security appliance.

Summary

Client: Bulgari Corporation
Organization size: 680 employees
Industry: Retail
Products: Security Center, Omnicast, Synergis, SV-PRO
Partners: SW24 Security Solutions, Arecont Vision, HID Global, Prism Skylabs.

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