Case Study: Homemakers Furniture achieves faster investigations and scalable IP surveillance with Genetec Security Center

Retail furniture business takes technological leap to IP with Security Center

Homemakers Furniture, one of Iowa’s largest furniture retailers with about 500,000 sq. ft. of space and 320 employees, faced unreliable, grainy analog DVR surveillance spread across eight disparate systems with limited retention and poor scalability. After evaluating options, Technical Systems Manager Ryan Gerth worked with Prime Communications to select Genetec’s Security Center platform, deploying Omnicast IP video to replace the aging analog infrastructure.

Genetec implemented Omnicast to manage roughly 170 Axis network cameras in a virtualized environment, consolidating storage on a 42 TB SAN, eliminating two full server racks, and enabling motion-based and continuous recording with 30–120 day retention. The solution sped up investigations (an incident was resolved within a week using recorded video), let management handle their own inquiries after training, and freed IT time — demonstrating measurable operational and infrastructure efficiencies delivered by Genetec.

Homemakers Furniture

Ryan Gerth

Technical Systems Manager