Located near the industrial cities of Coventry and Birmingham, this business scheme has proven to be a resounding success. In 1996, company founders Keith and Les Evans hit upon the ingenious idea of converting redundant farm buildings owned by their family agricultural business into modern storage units.

With the growing success of the business, the amount of traffic on the premises also began to increase. As a result, Box-It Central began to look for a solution to monitor the outside facilities and control access to the grounds in order to increase security for the customers and documents alike. "Our archives were already protected against intruders and fire hazards by alarm systems and smoke detectors. But because we also allow our customers to bring their documents directly to the archives themselves and to collect them as needed, we decided to install a video surveillance system as well. We wanted to be able to keep constant track of what vehicles access the business premises and what goes on there," continued Emlyn Evans. Box-It Central was looking for a system that was as maintenance-free as possible and would require no or minimum staff resources, which ruled out a solution using analog cameras that record onto tapes and require regular tape changing. In cooperation with system supplier Active Communications Ltd, the company evaluated a number of different systems before they decided to opt for MOBOTIX network cameras in April 2005.

Emlyn Evans commented: "The MOBOTIX network cameras were the perfect choice to provide what we needed on our premises. The cameras are maintenance-free, no additional, expensive software is required and further cameras can be easily integrated into the system at a later date." The people in charge at the company were also impressed by the extensive range of recording functions available, the highly precise event-controlled recording and the convenient display of the camera images in the web browser of the computer.

Event-controlled recording is a big advantage, since the camera only records when the motion sensor indicates that something is actually happening. That saves storage capacity and reduces search time. In the end, it was these exceptional features that convinced Box-It to order and install ten MOBOTIX cameras at once. The project, which also included the installation of a backbone network for the cameras, was completed in June 2005.

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