About 92 per cent of the world’s diamonds are cut and polished in the Indian city of Surat. Shree Ramkrishna Exports Pvt. Ltd. (SRK) is a diamond manufacturer in the region. The company processes more than 720,000 carats of rough diamonds annually. The company also has two head office buildings in Mumbai and an older factory in Surat. Protecting these diamonds that range in value from thousands to millions of US dollars from internal theft or loss requires thorough security.
While building their new six-storey diamond plant, SRK set up a fully IP-based video system using a new network. SRK had an analogue system in the older factory and was looking for clearer images and more features to investigate missing assets and track unusual behaviours. After six months in operation, SRK realized the limitations of their choice.
Santosh Kamble, Managing Director at NexGen Integrated Systems Pvt. Ltd., the Genetec-certified integrator for SRK. He said: “The initial IP video software SRK selected was only able to support 40-50 cameras per server. In growing the system, SRK had to decide whether they would spend a lot more money on servers or change the software to one that would provide greater network efficiency.”
SRK choose Genetec Security Center unified platform. SRK was also interested in Security Center’s ability to later integrate access control and license plate recognition.
Security Center has been fully deployed and its video system, Omnicast is managing over 1100 IP cameras across three buildings: the new factory in Surat and the two SRK head offices. A feature helping SRK maximise their infrastructure was Multicast. Many users can view a video feed at once without overcrowding the network or overloading the servers because Multicast uses the bandwidth of each network segment only once.
According to Shreyans Dholakia, Director at SRK Export: “We were able to keep our existing infrastructure, and get over 100 cameras per server. So in terms of scalability, it was an excellent solution.”
For investigations, its team often uses bookmarking, image exports, instant playbacks, and mobile system access from iPads. Thanks to Security Center Mobile, SRK directors can pull up video from their mobile phones, in or outside of their offices.
Mr Dholakia added: “Our floor managers are always on the move. So when incidents happen, they are able to do a little bit of investigation from their iPad to identify issues. They will then report their findings to the factory manager. Together with security and IT, our managers take a closer look in the control room. In terms of day-to-day operations, it has become so much easier and faster to review video. We can move forward and backwards, without any delays in accessing the video.”
SRK says that its IT team has also found Security Center to be reliable and easy to maintain. “Two of IT administrators underwent Authorized Genetec training. We feel we have really mastered our system and remain in control of regular maintenance. Even without any new updates, we can easily manage and maintain our system for a few years,” said Mr Dholakia. Tools such as Advanced Health Monitoring help the SRK team stay up to speed by automatically logging system health events and providing warnings for all basic components.
Expanding Investment in Genetec IP Security Solutions
“Since installing Genetec, we are very happy. We have established a good partnership with Genetec, and will continue growing our security system with Genetec,” Mr Dholakia said. It’s planned to expand the Security Center system into the older Surat factory.
Other plans such as integrating Omnicast with access control, license plate recognition and asset tracking systems are on their maybe-later list. “In the future, SRK will integrate Security Center with their RFID-enabled diamond tracking system to identify the real-time location of diamond packages and receive alarms if they move outside designated zones,” Mr Kamble said.
Infrastructure
A total of about 930 Axis Communications IP cameras including models Axis M1114, Axis M1346, Axis P5534, Axis M3204, and Axis P3346 are spread through SRK’s new diamond processing plant, about 100 cameras per floor. The other cameras cover both buildings at the main headquarters in Mumbai, with about 100 cameras each. Video from all these cameras are hosted on seven servers with SAN storage which allows SRK the ability to retain video recordings for about 15 days.
