Genetec™, a leading provider of unified IP security solutions announced its new Cloud Archives service for Security Center that will allow organizations to easily scale the available storage capacity of their surveillance system, and eliminate the need to invest in additional servers.

With the ability to continue leveraging their existing on-premise storage equipment, this hybrid cloud service will provide a cost-effective solution for customers who need to extend their video retention period or implement off-site recording.

Archived video will be encrypted prior to its transfer to the cloud to help ensure only authorized users can access recordings, while allowing operators to seamlessly view and search video from their Security Center system, whether archived locally or in the cloud.

Whether new policies mandate longer retention periods for recorded video, or as organizations add new cameras, updates to a surveillance system can exceed the storage requirements that were originally anticipated.

Cloud Archives can be enabled on any Security Center Archiver to define how long recordings are kept on-premise before being moved to the cloud, enabling customers to extend their available storage capacity as system requirements evolve.

Enterprise customers can also implement an off-site recording solution for complete redundancy using Cloud Archives, which can significantly reduce the operational costs necessary to host their own on-premise systems, such as electricity and equipment maintenance.

Organizations with distributed sites will also be able to pool their Cloud Archives resources across multiple systems to share capacity, and avoid the cost of adding new servers in each individual location.

Security Center Cloud Archives leverages Microsoft Azure, combining the strength of Genetec’s unified security platform with the global reach, scalability, and reliability of Azure.

With a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee backed by the Genetec service level agreement (SLA), all recorded content will be replicated and mirrored in the globally dispersed Azure datacenters to provide redundancy of video recordings and help mitigate the risk of video loss due to failure of on-premises hardware.

“We’re excited to see the evolution of Genetec’s cloud service portfolio bringing new possibilities to the physical security industry through Azure,” said Kim Akers, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft. “With storage being one of the largest costs of operating a surveillance system, Cloud Archives gives Genetec customers the opportunity to significantly reduce their investment when deploying or expanding their security system on Azure,” added Akers.

Security Center Cloud Archives is currently available as a preview to Security Center certified channel partners and customers, and will be generally available during Q1, 2015 as a subscription-based service.