Industry observers predict that the global Internet protocol surveillance market will increase to $6.48 billion by 2012, up from $435.8 million in 2005, according to Frost and Sullivan. The technology has become very sophisticated, involving IP-enabled high-resolution cameras and encoders, video storage and search capabilities, and object-recognition software. Digital video surveillance using computers and networks to store, play back, and analyze surveillance videos represents the future of the industry. Information technology (IT) professionals should prepare themselves to handle the demands that will come when surveillance video shares IT infrastructure. The line between storage and networking of digital videos continues to blur as video technology migrates from servers to appliances the way firewalls and Web caching have. While in some cases, entirely parallel networks are constructed for digital surveillance, most organizations will need to use resource pooling for cost reasons. This means requirements for storing, sharing, managing, and securing surveillance video overlap the requirements for other kinds of video in the enterprise, such as video conferencing and corporate communications. In the same way that PBXs merged into IT departments, experts predict a convergence of IT, physical security, and audio-visual departments. Successful video-surveillance deployments require intelligence in the camera, network, and storage systems.