ZPower

ZPower, creators of award-winning sustainable technology, offers a proprietary silver-zinc battery technology that can be recharged hundreds of times without losing significant capacity. As one of 2018’s fastest-growing private companies according to Inc. Magazine, ZPower needed to find ways to scale security and operational efficiency within the business to keep up with the rapid pace of growth.

Challenges

The legacy CCTV system at ZPower was outdated, unreliable, and a clear misfit for a team riding on the cutting edge of technology. The archaic ways of managing the video surveillance became a noticeable strain for not just the facilities team, but the IT team as well.

Challenge 1: Limited Remote Access to Viewing

The ZPower facilities team had a legacy CCTV system that made remote access to viewing video footage difficult. The system’s network video recorder (NVR) was unreliable and introduced security threats because ports needed to be opened on the firewall to allow remote access to video footage. Because the traditional workflows were not optimized for viewing video remotely, it became a tedious feat and sluggish experience for the IT team.

Challenge 2: Restricted Multi-user Access to Footage

If another stakeholder, such as the Director of Operations or HR, needed to review specific footage, they would have to rely on the Facilities or IT teams to assist them, affecting the ability to respond to real-time situations efficiently and effectively.

Challenge 3: Strain on the IT Team

Routine surveillance or incident resolution tasks introduced significant pain points for the IT team and shifted focus away from imperative initiatives in order to execute on manual, and tedious tasks. The time investments made to work through inefficient processes — such as pulling footage, optimizing the quality of the videos, and then routing it to the appropriate stakeholder — required around the clock manpower and wasn’t scalable for the rapidly growing team.

Why Verkada?

Faced with ambitious plans for expansion, ZPower needed an affordable video surveillance system that would be easy to install, maintain and expand to their approved, internal team for 24/7 remote access to their facilities.

When Chief Information Officer, Nitin Arneja, came across Verkada, he was immediately struck by the reported ease of use and short turnaround time to deploy. Nitin reached out to Verkada, requesting an indoor camera and an outdoor camera to pilot. Within days, he received the cameras, and within hours, the cameras were installed and ready to use.

The Results

Verkada’s modern-video surveillance system has provided Arneja and his team at ZPower an intuitive security solution that reduces both complexity and cost.

Fast and Smooth Deployment

“[Verkada cameras] are plug-and-play, easy to use and require minimal support.” – Bryan Willis, IS Manager, Infrastructure and Operations

Because Verkada systems enable the latest security standards without the need for special technical configuration or maintenance, setting up the cameras in their primary facility took all of 15 minutes. It took Bryan Willis another 15 minutes to connect the cameras to Command, Verkada’s software platform, to access and monitor footage remotely on his mobile device in real time. “Altogether, it took us 30 minutes to install the cameras and grant access to administrative staff,” says Nitin, “I couldn’t have imagined a more seamless deployment experience.”

Easy Maintenance

“(Verkada)’s the easiest system for monitoring we’ve ever used.” -Herbert Weigel, Chief Operating Officer

With the knowledge that Verkada cameras release regular updates to its firmware and software, Nitin and his IT team are confident in knowing that the cameras are always up to date with the latest and greatest from Verkada. These updates – security enhancements as well as new features and functionality – are pushed automatically during scheduled maintenance windows, so no action is required for regular maintenance.

Remote, Multi-User Access

“Verkada was a no brainer for us — it’s perfect for keeping tabs on our operations across multiple locations.” -Nitin Arneja, Chief Information Officer

With Command, Verkada’s video-monitoring platform, Nitin and his team have been able to easily view all cameras, across locations, in a single browser video via laptop, smartphone or tablet. The ability to add users to Command and grant them permissions to cameras also eliminated the need to involve Facilities or IT team in accessing real-time footage.

Speed Up Response Times

During ZPower’s two week pilot, there was an incident at the facility that was captured by one of Verkada’s outdoor cameras.The facilities team quickly resolved the issue by using Command’s time-lapse feature to quickly scan over the footage, locate the clip, and export the recording to the Director of Human Resources. Verkada’s easy-to-use platform reduces the hassle of finding specific video footage and significantly speeds up the team’s response times.

What’s Next

With plans to expand in the upcoming year, ZPower has already enlisted Verkada’s hybrid-cloud security systems to ensure the security of personnel and facilities. Nitin is particularly excited to participate in the beta of an upcoming release by Verkada – leveraging motion capture and pattern recognition video analytics.

With Verkada, ZPower is facilitating a more seamless communication process for all stakeholders involved in security and has simplified video surveillance for their rapidly expanding facilities.