New asset management plugin now available
This week, we announced our first Security Center plugin related to asset management. We've teamed up with RF Code to integrate their asset tracking solution. RF Code manufactures a variety of asset tags and readers, all managed with their Asset Manager software. This new plugin is in line with our vision to offer our customer base a single unified interface for access control, video, alarm management, intrusion, and now, asset management.
Our customers can now monitor and report on asset activities and alerts (alarms) in our unified UI, the Security Desk. One of the really nice features offered by this plugin is the ability to assign a picture to an asset, very much like we do for cardholders. So whenever that asset moves, the operator will see live/playback video as well as a picture of the asset, making it easier for the operator to identify the asset visually in the video stream.
I wanted to highlight a few details about our asset management plugin architecture to put an emphasis on what we've done differently from most competitors. We've added the concept of assets in the Security Center so there is now a new entity related to assets, as opposed to strictly displaying events from a third-party system. The power of this subtlety is that users can now run reports on these assets, filter reports, assign a picture to an asset, as well as associate cameras to asset locations. The plugin itself runs in a dedicated role. What this means is that for larger systems with thousands of assets and asset readers, the role can run on a dedicated server, thereby ensuring it scales when it has to and lessen the burden on the Directory. Users have the flexibility to run it on the same server as the Directory or on its own. So I am happy to say that our integration is pretty extensive and will continue to evolve based on customer feedback.
Use cases for this feature can range from a universal need to monitor asset activity and location in any warehouse, to specific retail, to monitoring IT equipment and server racks. The possibilities are limitless. If you have a particular use case for this plugin, do not hesitate to let me or anyone on the Genetec team know.