The unprecedented flexibility of FrontRange Solutions` information technology services management (ITSM) product is enabling South African security services company, Rhino Surveillance Systems (RSS), to be first to market - globally - with a new cellphone-linked surveillance camera as well as deliver remote maintenance and management services for the camera from SA to the rest of the world.
The camera - which is no bigger than a cellphone - is mobile and can be linked to a cellphone. It has heat and movement detection capabilities which, when triggered, send an SMS to the cellphone.
The person receiving the SMS can then dial the camera and view what the camera is seeing - and trigger emergency action if necessary. The reverse of the functionality is the ability to dial in and view anytime the user desires.
The camera was developed in the UK and is manufactured in China, but RSS will be the first organisation to distribute it, starting in October 2005. RSS also has the exclusive licence to provide remote maintenance and management, locally and internationally.
To do that, RSS has had to develop very sophisticated software capabilities.
The process of managing each camera - 75 000 are expected to be activated in SA alone during the next 12 months - is complex.
Camera inventory is tracked remotely by RSS in and out of distributor premises. Purchaser credit ratings, subscriber contracts, and activation between the camera and the cellphone are undertaken jointly by RSS and MTN.
Camera queries or fault reports are handled by the RSS call centre, which can scan cameras remotely and send correcting software to faulty ones. Accordingly, all information about each camera - from serial number and the types of faults reported to the number of times it has been activated - must be accessible by the call centre.
Any traffic between the camera and its related cellphone is tracked and passed on to the RSS system by Leaf Wireless for billing purposes.
As RSS technical manager, Mike Stiles, says: "There are very few software packages designed to provide live access for so many different types of organisations - including RSS` own management and financial teams - for so many different types of data. And just managing 75 000 devices each taking up to eight hits a month creates more pressure than most systems can withstand.
"I`d worked with computer systems for 25 years and knew of nothing suitable. But then we found FrontRange IT Service Management. It already had a lot of what we needed and customising it to meet our more individualistic needs took only a month of full-time programming. And it took only a week to install.
"Also, I have rarely worked with a supplier as willing as FrontRange Solutions to accommodate the kind of demanding client we have been. From the day we gave them our 75 pages of specifications, their local and international developers worked with us unstintingly."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) managing director, Tracey Newman, says FrontRange IT Service Management`s superior adaptability to customers` needs results from its basis in Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a framework of best practice guidelines for the management of IT services.
"FrontRange`s entire focus for more than a decade has been to enable customers to realise the ultimate potential of IT services as revenue drivers rather than cost centres. By basing our products on ITIL, we`re as close to that ideal as it is possible to be."
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