brokitt

The regulation thats this falls under is electrical and is due the Possible Earth differential between building you can find requirements and explanation in electical guidline link below should give you a bit more info. Electrical Installation Guide - Google Book Search

Thats a shame your manager is being short sighted! Nearly all IP cameras can be powered via POE so possible to even keep up during a power cut or at least have a specified period of uptime. The traditional security companies are scared of touching networks and dont undersatnd IP so this is how i found them protecting their business. They need to wake up this will only be a short term fix for them. IP cameras can be purchase in an array of resolutions far superior to analogue the only real issue here is bandwidth and storage. I think the price you have of 800 to 1000 per channel/camera would stay the same possible more with some of the higher resolution kit. But with this you would get far more storage 3Tb + and not some DVR with 500gb recording in CIF (352 x 288) Also another consideration would be analytics, maybe not being taken up in all business sectors due to cost but you are finding that the IP Camera makers are begining to incorperate some analytics in to their cameras. Analogue just can not do this with out being very, very expensive and is normally only achieved on a % of the camera network. Maybe next time the analogue system falls over or footage rendered unacceptable due to quality the powers to be will think again!

I normally advise people to budget between 300 and 350 per seat. ISDN30 is break point at 8ch over ISDN2e. I would also say based on bandwidth cost to support SIP Trunks and the lack of service agreements around for these that ISDN30 is far cheaper price. The biggest driver at the moment for using VOIP Trunks is relocation away from the local exchange and the ability to port your number and take it with you no matter where you relocate to. We install and maintain Toshiba CIX systems these are really reliable and support VOIP, Digital, Analogue. Using IP we can support hot desking also a good feature that we have used previously is the ability to create Phantom Extension numbers with Voicemail inbox. So from any handset or a dedicated handset users can pick up there voicemail. Would be more than happy to give you a budgetary quote if you have all the details you require. i.e. number extension IP, analogue, digital, Voicemail etc.

Eacxq Vision is good software a bit more expensive now because of the dollar rate but believe it is alot cheaper than milestone. Supports analogue and IP but you will need a supported capture device for analogue. can be installed in a windows server enviroment or Linux

This is a hard one to answer fully without knowing the application but here goes: There is 2x thoughts on the recording solution didcated appliance devices NVR with embedded OS or Windows based software installed on server architecture. There are + & - on both. Cameras, a large array out there and this makes choosing the recording platform critical. I found that very rarely can you use one manufacture for all so need multi vendor support. Megapixel is great but this brings with it storage and bandwidth issues. I would like to advise customer that they should put in nothing else, but cost can sometime be the issue. I would look at changing out the cameras that maybe you want more resolution on and then use codecs to bridge the analogue to the IP recording solution. we have installed the Sirrus solution NVR's these are ruggerdised built on XP Embedded and their new 4u chassis supports 8x drive bay. You can install as many as you require max 24 cameras per server. Various viewing clients. the other software we are looking at and trialing at the moment is Exacq this is also multi cameravendor support and will expand 100,s to 1000 camera installs. This is installed on a linux or windows server platform. Cameras: Sony, Axis, IQEye, Vivotek, Dynacolor, Panasonic, have installed these product previous. Have just started playing with the Acti's as mentioned in other quotes these are well priced but i have issue with current sirrus NVR new version out early next year to support H264, MPEG4 etc Acti deliver over RTP/RTSP ok with Exacq if you want any other info then more than happy to answer your questions