ST. PAUL, Minn.--American Security & Investigations, a security guard firm, has partnered with IP video monitoring provider Iveda Solutions to offer real-time and remote camera access to its customers.

"It's very uncharacteristic" for a guard firm, agreed Tim Kingsley, director of special projects and government affairs at American. "But one of the things we're realizing is that the way things are done is starting to change." Kingsly called the installation of IP cameras "pretty simple," with power over Ethernet and wireless technologies allowing for a camera "pretty much anywhere you want."

The business case makes sense, as American is often brought in for risk assessment and it can now keep the CCTV work it used to farm out, but it's also part and parcel with the company's forward-looking philosophy: "The end user is expecting more out of their security system and their security provider," said Kingsley. "We are a people company ... [but] ... The end user is tired of the lump that sits at the desk and doesn't understand the idiosyncrasies of the security program."

For the time being, all video will be monitored at Iveda's data center, "but, in the future, there might be some interesting developments," Kingsley said.

Important to the partnership was both organizations' familiarity and work with the public-safety community, he said, and it was through a police-based relationship that American came across Iveda. "Agencies need to access data and video," Kingsley said. "How do they do it, and how do they do it simply? I saw so many limitations with other companies, and the creativity of Iveda's platform is very exciting."