Axis & MCW Group helps protecting students and buildings at Knowsley College's expanding campusesKnowsley Community College recently completed deployment of 263 Axis network cameras across its two main campuses in Roby and Kirkby, near Liverpool. The total contract was valued at approximately £450,000. MCW Group won a competitive tender to supply and install these cameras, integrating them back into the campus-wide network and configuring Milestone XProtect system to manage output from the cameras. This will also safeguard the new Management and Industrial Innovation Centre at the Kirkby campus will be home to the expanding higher education programme at the college. MCW Group will record output from these cameras onto a total of six HP Proliant Servers. The servers will have Xeon Dual Processors, four Giga Bytes (GB) of Random Access Memory (RAM), as well as redundant power supplies and cooling fans. Three servers will be installed at each site. The plan is for each server to handle output from 46 cameras offering a maximum capacity of 276 cameras initially. Each server will be connected via SCSI controllers to two 14 Hard Disc Drive (HDD) modular storage arrays delivering 300 GB per disc. This will mean each server will provide up to 9.6 Terabytes (TB) of storage across internal HDDs and the attached storage arrays. This storage is designed to provide capacity for 28 days of images collected and compressed at eight frames per second. Storage and event management will be controlled by the Milestone XProtect software suite. A total of 96 AXIS 210As, 46 AXIS 221s and four AXIS 232D dome network cameras will be deployed at the college's Roby site; whilst seven miles away at the college's Kirkby site an additional 81 AXIS 210As, 33 AXIS 221s and three AXIS 232D network cameras will be deployed. A total of 263 Axis network cameras will be deployed across both sites.  The first phase of the project - configuration and installation of all servers, storage, switch infrastructure, cabling and cabinets was completed in November. The second phase, which will be completed this month, will include installation of all Axis network cameras.
Kevin Williams, director of technical services, MCW Group, explained: "We are very pleased to be carrying out such a significant implementation of Axis network cameras. It is proof positive of our expertise in the IP-Surveillance market which is now growing very rapidly." Steve Gorski, managing director of Axis Communications UK Ltd, commented: "This order illustrates that large-scale, mission-critical security systems can be IP-based. It is starting to become clear that there are some real advantages of using network cameras over traditional analogue CCTV cameras and we are seeing a significant increase in demand for larger professional security systems as well as smaller ones." | 
