On one of the Linkedin discussion groups i found a very interesting question that was posted by Mauro Buratti from Alcatel "is CCTV and video surveillance already turned to be a commodity ?

When you look at the building blocks of the CCTV system like Cameras DVRs, Displays then you get the impression that CCTV has been a commodity for AGES, as far back as George Orwel's 1984 novel with the famous quote "Big Brother is Watching".

But is he really Watching? Or is he just recording? For CCTV to actually deliver on its promise it needs real good management & archiving software on the one side and Video analytics on the other. Even as more and more software packages can actually be found commoditised and packaged within "cheap" and not so cheap cameras and DVRs. I will still have to say that CCTV as a commodity depends on your perspective

When you are talking about a full deployment of a CCTV system, that is a completely different story. In those scenarios you are deploying high end professional management and analytic systems as your feature product, and that is only a fraction of the actual cost that goes out on surveys and professional services.