Make a list of the components of your current system: the cameras (models, IP addresses, protocols — ONVIF, RTSP, codecs, usernames and passwords), the recording logic (continuous, on motion, on schedule, archive depth), user settings and access rights, the features and the infrastructure (servers, drives, network, power) in use.

Before changing anything, it’s worth seeing the product for yourself. Get in touch and request trial licenses — they unlock Xeoma’s full functionality so you can test the system on your own cameras and in your own conditions before the switch, with no obligations.

Estimate the resources your workload will require: CPU power, disk space for the archive, network bandwidth. If you plan to add features you didn’t have before, plan for some extra capacity (mainly, CPU and disk), since intelligent modules take more resources than plain recording. Decide where Xeoma will run: on your existing server, on a new one, or in a distributed system across several machines with central control and monitoring.

Those who haven’t dealt with migrating a system from one vendor to another often expect that the old system’s settings can somehow be imported into the new one seamlessly and quickly. In practice, unfortunately, that’s not the case: in 99% of cases a system stores its settings in its own closed format, and exporting the configuration for transfer to another vendor’s solution is not provided for by the manufacturer. That’s a deliberate policy of keeping the user within its own ecosystem.

Fortunately, none of this will be a problem when migrating to Xeoma. Xeoma is quick and easy to set up thanks to its clear, modular interface: features are modules that you put into a chain like building blocks. Reproducing your usual configuration and adding what was missing will go faster than you’d think.

Let Xeoma find the cameras on the network automatically, or add them manually by IP address (the list from step 1 comes in handy here). Build a chain of modules for each camera that mirrors the logic of your old system — a source, detectors, reactions (recording to the archive, notifications) — and set up what was missing before. Replicating the scheme won’t take long: cameras can be configured all at once through group settings. See also the getting-started video for Xeoma.

Transferring the archive directly between systems from different manufacturers is usually impossible, because of their different storage formats. There are two practical approaches:
keep access to the old archive for a while — leave the old system in view-only mode until the recordings retention period expires and they become irrelevant, while writing the new archive in Xeoma;
or export the recordings you need as ordinary video files, if there’s something worth keeping for the long term.
You can also index “foreign” recordings in Xeoma by running them through the program as video, though with this approach their timestamps will be thrown off.

Test Xeoma the way it will actually work: by day and by night, as the lighting changes, through power and network outages, and across restarts. Make sure notifications arrive, the archive records to the depth you need, and the detectors fire in your target scenarios without raising false alarms.

Set up Xeoma’s system features: operator access rights, notifications about hardware failures, the event log.

Once testing is done, you can move on to the final part — retiring the old system. How to make the switch depends on your situation: in most cases it’s easiest to carry out the migration during a quiet period and switch over to Xeoma, leaving the old system in archive-viewing mode or doing away with it entirely. Keeping two live platforms running at once on a single server is usually difficult, since it calls for a huge margin of hardware capacity to handle the double load, which is rare. Once the old archive’s retention period is over, you can shut down the old system for good.

In Xeoma, save a snapshot of your settings for backup of the configuration. It will act as a kind of insurance: if something gets misconfigured, the system can be restored in a matter of minutes. Prepare a short set of instructions for your operators on how to work with the program. Then you’re all set for permanent use of Xeoma as your main video surveillance and video analytics solution.

By the way, thanks to the free customization and rebranding utility, you can create a “stripped-down,” simplified version for security guards and surveillance operators, so that unnecessary elements don’t distract them.