How a Colorado Springs manufacturer replaced failing analog cameras with 100+ IP cameras on one platform

A large manufacturing facility in Colorado Springs had a camera system it could no longer trust. Many cameras had stopped working, the video software was unreliable, and large parts of the site had no coverage at all. We replaced it with a Milestone commercial video surveillance platform running more than 100 IP cameras and over 200 video streams, monitored from a video wall, with point-to-point wireless extending coverage to parking lots and remote guard shacks. Our Colorado Springs office designed and installed the system with local technicians. The security team now runs the whole facility from one platform.

The challenge

The plant was running an aging analog camera system, and a large share of the cameras had simply failed. Some were dead. Others produced footage too poor to be useful. The software tying them together had become unreliable enough that the security team had lost confidence in what they were looking at.

Coverage was the bigger problem. The system had never reached the outer edges of the site. Parking lots, access roads, and remote guard shacks sat outside its range, which left the areas most exposed after hours with no eyes on them. Running new cable to those distant points across a site that size is slow and expensive, and that cost had kept the gaps open for years.

The facility needed a full replacement, not another patch: higher-resolution cameras, software the team could rely on, and coverage that reached the parts of the property the old system never did.

The solution

We designed and installed a Milestone video management platform to replace the analog system end to end. The build carries more than 100 IP cameras and over 200 video streams, monitored from a video wall run by two workstations and four large-screen monitors. New structured cabling ties the interior cameras together and gives the system room to grow.

For the outdoor coverage the old system never reached, we used point-to-point wireless links instead of trenching cable across the site. Those links carry the feeds from parking lots and remote guard shacks back to the same platform as everything inside, so the security team sees the whole property in one place rather than treating the perimeter as a separate problem.

Our Colorado Springs office handled the design and installation with local technicians. We are an authorized dealer for the video surveillance systems we install, so the system was specified and built by the same people who service it. We install and service commercial video surveillance across Colorado Springs and Southern Colorado, from single-building offices to industrial sites like this one.

The outcome

The security team now manages the entire facility from one platform. The higher-resolution IP cameras removed the blind spots the analog system left across the interior, and the picture quality is good enough to act on rather than guess at.

The outdoor coverage changed how the site is watched after hours. Parking lots and the remote guard shacks that had no cameras before now feed into the same video wall as the production floor. The team no longer finds out about a problem the next morning because a camera at the edge of the property was never there to catch it.

Because the platform has room to scale on the new cabling, the facility can add cameras as the site changes without starting over.

Frequently asked questions

Can a new camera system reuse existing cabling, or does everything get replaced?

It depends on the cabling. Older analog coax usually has to be replaced to support IP cameras, but existing structured cabling in good condition can often carry a new system. We assess the cabling during the site walk and tell you what can be reused before any work starts.

How do you get camera coverage to parking lots and outbuildings without trenching cable?

Point-to-point wireless links. They carry camera feeds from distant parts of a site, such as parking lots, access gates, and remote guard shacks, back to the main system without running cable across the property. On large industrial sites this is often faster and less disruptive than trenching, and the feeds land on the same platform as the wired cameras.

How many cameras can one video management platform handle?

Enterprise platforms like Milestone scale into the hundreds of cameras and thousands of streams on the right hardware. The limit is usually server capacity, storage, and network design rather than the software. This project runs more than 100 cameras and over 200 streams on a single platform, with room to add more.

Do you service systems your own team installed?

Yes. We install and service the systems we specify, and we offer service agreements that cover scheduled maintenance and priority response. Keeping the same integrator through the life of the system means the people servicing it already know how it was built.