The biggest selling point is really the OPEX sales model, and outsourcing of the general care-and-feeding of the recorders/servers. The tradeoff is that you tend to get lesser quality video and/or less scalability of the size of the system from bandwidth limitations.

Theft of recorders/loss of recorded video is much much less of an issue than it is generally made out to be, and most systems have various means for auto backups, dual recording, etc. Many also have the ability to send select segments of video, based on motion or analytics, to cloud/FTP/email for free, which adds some extra resiliency if you are really worried about random arsonists :)

(I work in the industry)

I am still honestly confused by the whole "OpEx > CapEx" thing. Apparently for some people this is worth paying over double the price when you look at things on an annualized basis, even for an established business that's got a very stable environment?

In short, yes it is.

The concept of having a predictable recurring bill, and known costs can have a lot of value. In the opex hardware model, there is usually a hardware refresh built in (a lease of sorts) and also covered replacements for any failures before the refresh.

> a predictable recurring bill

This makes no sense to me, because almost no OpEx-based services operate on a predictable billing model. Usage based pricing means they are subject to change.

If I buy a $5,000 server, and it lasts me five years, I can plan around needing $1,000 a year set aside to replace it. Meanwhile, my AWS bill can suddenly be $20,000 with no warning.

The hardware refresh model you describe... I've actually only ever seen in a CapEx appliance, where paying for the support contract got you those refreshes regularly, replacement for failures, etc. but had an initial upfront purchase cost.

When the news comes out that a major company has signed a deal with a cloud provider, it's that they've committed to spend $X over N years. Presumably the deal would be renegotiated if their usage changed dramatically, but it is not actually variable pricing.

Compare SaaS to COTS software: same thing, (somewhat) different industry.

> (I work in the industry)

Ohhhh, you are so in trouble now! :P

I am pondering moving to a rather remote estate with my wife but we're both city kids and have zero clue how to defend ourselves in such conditions (I am even thinking we should take shooting lessons and bring guns to the estate as well).

Part of our plan is a surveillance system -- I planned to have an on-site ZFS storage cluster with several cameras that periodically encrypts the last 5 minutes and sends them off-site. Not sure how complex such a setup might turn out to be though... Maybe there's a way to make the storage cluster itself auto-replicate remotely often enough? I'm not that educated yet.

Do you have any recommendations? I don't want to spend $5000 due to paranoia but I don't want to be defenseless in case of a robbery either. What's the middle ground?

Is it just me or does this seem kind of excessive?

The area I want to move in is known for its heightened percent of home invasions and burglaries. So I don't know, maybe it is excessive. I just don't want my life savings to fall into the hands of a random burglar.

Why keep your savings at home? For anything critical I use a safe deposit box.

My bad for using bad figure of speech. Of course most of my savings won't even be physical (bank / cryptocurrency / investments etc.) -- I meant that I'll have all my possessions there (expensive computers, TVs, furniture, kitchen tech, what have you) and I would like to avoid having them stolen while I am grocery shopping in the nearest city, you know.

Is law enforcement in the area such that cameras would be a real deterrent?

No clue. But I am accepting another commenter's idea that having very visible cameras (on purpose!), solid fence and 1-3 guard dogs should be enough to deter 99% of the potential home invaders.

To me excessive would be automatic tracking turrets with really nasty things mounted on them. I recall someone made one that fits in a briefcase and uses paintballs. It had something like 90% accuracy on fast randomly moving targets. But for some people that might not be excessive, probably depends on the circumstances.

Reminds me of the hotel scene in the book "Altered Carbon". The Netflix series did a good job visually with this scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6VaUPmaCcI

That is a great show and I agree, that hotel is a perfect example. I really hope they keep the show going.

Forgive me asking but which country do you live in.

I often have debates with my wife about country vs city living, but I don't think buying a gun / attack dog / big security system ever comes into the equation. (UK based).

Am I not paranoid enough, are you over paranoid? Is there a Bayesian equation we need here?

Just to put up an alternative I just read this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411899

The guy cycled through Europe and India, met some guy in a bar in Italy and ended up sleeping on his couch and eating home cooked Pasta lunch the next day. A different approach would be to drive with a gun under the seat. I think something is missing.

> (UK based)

Often what's "country" in the UK (outside of Scotland) would be considered exurban in the USA. You might possibly feel different about security at a truly remote home in N America.

Me and my wife were thinking Costa Rica but got warned by an acquaintance that burglaries and home invasions in remote areas are a regular occurrence. And we want a sea-side house.

> Am I not paranoid enough

Do you also forgo a fire extinguisher in your kitchen?

This isn't a short conversation, but you can contact me offline and I can give you some pointers.

Pinged you on twitter several hours ago, as I can't find any other accounts in your HN profile and don't want to stalk by looking you up online.

To be honest, the easiest way is to 1) Buy and install a bunch of ring cameras and 2) Buy and learn to use a Mossberg 500 with a 18" barrel. Maybe another gun, too. Total cost: Idk, $800-1800.

Would not a large dog suffice? They're more maintenance, but also come with other benefits.

Yep, we thought of buying two specially trained German shepherds (the kind of training that requires you to be there so the dog bonds with you and trusts nobody else).

Still not sure about guns but the dogs would indeed be a very good investment.

An Anatolian livestock guardian dog is a vastly superior natural guard dog, compared to a GSD. They can not be bribed with food, and they spend every second of their waking day looking for intruders to destroy. Very gentle with children and small dogs, though.

Downsides include being extremely smart but not very trainable (smart like a wolf) -- they decide what's a threat and what isn't, and they don't care about your opinion. They guard naturally. Also, you may find yourself having to bury dead coyotes on occasion, as they will murder any that are stupid enough to intrude.

Very interesting, thanks a lot! I'll research more.

> specially trained

I think you might be overthinking this. The dogs don't even need to be large. If the property is more than a few acres just get 2 or 3 herding dogs. They're upbeat, energetic, and above all very noisy if a stranger wanders into your yard. I very much doubt anyone will ever bother you.

> Still not sure about guns

How remote is it? What's the police response time? If it's really in the middle of nowhere then it seems like a good idea to have something on hand just in case.

> How remote is it? What's the police response time? If it's really in the middle of nowhere then it seems like a good idea to have something on hand just in case.

Exactly because of that: remote and small country (Costa Rica is one idea so far), we would prefer a sea-side house which is NOT very close to a city (we think 20-30km away from a city is optimal) and we have no clue about police response time -- but I can't imagine they'll be there 2 minutes after I make a panicked call that I am tracking 3 armed burglars, especially if not in a city.

> I think you might be overthinking this.

Very possible. Right now I don't even have the money for a down-payment, but me and my wife both share this dream and started brainstorming it and doing some preliminary planning.

Above all, I really want the dogs to not be able to be bribed with food. Not a fan of dogs that bark at every single small disturbance but oh well, if that's the price you pay for living in a remote area and having good security then okay.

> Costa Rica is one idea so far

Oh, I was imagining remote rural in the US or a similar country (Canada, Scandinavia, etc). I have absolutely no idea what public safety concerns might exist in less developed places.

> want the dogs to not be able to be bribed with food

It's more that a solid looking fence, a few dogs, and some visible security cameras are highly likely to deter any attempts in the first place. If someone is armed and willing to shoot your dogs then you have much larger problems to deal with (and probably don't want to be living there to begin with).

Also, convenience: Buy this camera, get access to recordings anywhere over the internet with nearly zero setup time.

If you have an on-site system (like I do) it's way more effort for the average consumer.

That's not security, that's voyeurism

Was also thinking the same. Security cameras should be used where there is an incident and additional information is needed to clarify what happened. Then you check the security camera footage to figure out what happened. If there were no incidents there is not reasonable need for anyone to look at that footage.

edit: not talking here about active monitoring security cameras used by guards.

Plausibly, yes, though again, large enterprises should be able to handle this internally, especially some of the listed customers here.

There are plenty of use cases, such as the various forms of analysis with ML, which are often only implemented outside the "company firewall" (this idea is antiquated.) Of course, this could and should be handled inside a trusted boundary (I can't think of a better term for today's networks), but in practice security here is fairly immature and people try things when there isn't good governance in place.

This sounds like general problem of enterprise security. There are no consequences.

I can entirely get why a company would outsource IP cameras to a third party cloud, even with storing data on-site. Business runs on contracts. It's entirely normal to contract out everything except your core competencies, if it's cheaper this way. It's how you turn CAPEX, complex OPEX and high risk into simple OPEX and low risk. A contract is in big part a risk shifting tool. This works well in practice... outside IT.

The problem is, with IT and data, there's a mismatch between expectations and reality. An enterprise should feel safe buying their video surveillance from Verkada, because between the contract and the legal framework, Verkada should be bankrupt now, and their management possibly facing jail time. That's the part where contracts work as Cover-Your-Ass tool: if you shift risk and liability to outside party, the liability is not on you.

However, this only works as long as the other party actually internalizes the risk and liability. Since there are no consequences for mishandling data, operating IT services you're not structurally competent to operate, and eventually having your crown jewels stolen - the contractor doesn't really internalize risk, has no incentive to mitigate it.

All this to say: Verkada should go down after this, and their customers should be named and shamed widely - the latter is so that future customers of IT services put more care into vetting companies they contract IT out to. You shouldn't get to CYA with a contract where assumptions around contracting are broken.

I work in a large enterprise. If my employer were to decide to exclusively store security footage on our own infrastructure, then I would have access to every piece of hardware it’s stored on. The risks associated with that is why every piece of mission critical data where I work is, at a minimum, backed up in a 3rd party facility.

Another one is that you can run machine learning on it. For example to automatically detect unusual activity.

You can absolutely run machine learning on-premise hardware.