Synology C2 Surveillance announcement
At this week's Computex 2025 expo, Synology showcased an array of new hardware, including both updated existing models and entirely new ones. From Tier 1 active-active enterprise-grade systems to the latest X25 DS NAS models, Synology also highlighted its cloud products and services.
Luka Manestar
This years Computex expo has a lot to offer
Over the past two years, the company has begun developing and releasing its proprietary surveillance cameras while also rebranding its existing surveillance web services, such as C2 Backup for Surveillance.
Luka Manestar
The rationale for this was outlined last year with the announcement of the new C2 Surveillance platform. Later this year, Synology plans to roll out these services to the masses, starting with today's official announcement.
Luka Manestar
Luka Manestar
"Our goal has always been to build a comprehensive surveillance ecosystem that enables seamless integration and management for our customers. With the addition of C2 Surveillance, customers now have the flexibility to deploy their surveillance solutions entirely on-premises or in the cloud, depending on their unique requirements"
C2 Surveillance is a new VSaaS (Video Surveillance as a Service) platform crafted to offer a pure cloud monitoring solution with multi-site scalability. It requires no device licenses and accommodates an unlimited number of Synology cameras. The platform centers on key elements like effortless setup, continuity-first architecture, and scalability.
End-to-End Surveillance Ecosystem
Synology has been a player in the surveillance market for decades. However, with its new "business" approach, it's evident that as advancements are made in its storage lineup, similar progress is also necessary in surveillance.
The new platform is designed to enhance three key areas: setup, continuity, and scalability. With a simple plug-and-play approach, everything can be up and running in minutes. According to Synology, the complete initial setup takes just 3 minutes. Like the on-prem Surveillance Station, the C2 Surveillance platform offers a straightforward, unified management interface for monitoring, user and camera management, site configuration, and more.
With cloud-based systems, concerns about network disruptions and continuous recording often arise. In response, Synology introduced its cameras over the past two years and supports third-party models with its Surveillance Station platform. The company also announced upcoming branded microSD cards, ensuring safe on-device recording in case of local or remote network communication failures.
Synology cameras support local SD card recording, which is advantageous in similar situations. Additionally, the C2 Surveillance platform includes a failover offline mode that allows for local monitoring during network interruptions.
To support organizations operating across multiple locations, C2 Surveillance utilizes cloud infrastructure for centralized management of cameras across sites. Seamless integration with Windows Active Directory enables centralized identity and access management. Role-based access control allows administrators to easily delegate specific permissions across teams or locations.
Additionally, C2 Surveillance supports a low bandwidth mode to reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 50%, with minimal impact on video quality, making it ideal for environments with bandwidth constraints.
Synology is strongly positioning the C2 Surveillance platform as one of its main C2 cloud services. Built on the decade-old C2 platform, the new Surveillance service offers customers a fast, smart, and scalable full-cloud solution.
The pricing details are still unknown, except for compatible Synology cameras. Synology aims to position itself competitively in the market with this new service, offering cloud backup licenses as an optional add-on. This means that the cost of C2 Surveillance will depend on the number of cameras and sites required.
Synology Surveillance future?
With two robust surveillance solutions—Synology's DSM OS-powered on-prem Surveillance Station and the upcoming C2 Surveillance platform—what does the future hold for Synology surveillance?
Although not detailed extensively during the Computex expo, more hardware in this department is anticipated. Specifically, new network switches, including both PoE and non-PoE models, and the new rack-based DVA model, the DVA7400, are expected.
This new model is a 16-bay rack-based AMD system equipped with a dedicated GPU, capable of supporting up to 100 camera streams and 40 simultaneous AI video analysis tasks, such as motion detection, facial recognition, and people counting.
The DVA7400 will feature multiple LAN connections, including dual 10GbE ports for video and data manipulation and a single 1GbE port for local and remote management. Its dedicated GPU boasts an AI CPU capable of over 190 TFLOPS, supported by 16GB of VRAM.
Regarding camera licensing, like other DVA and NAS devices, the DVA7400 will have a limited number of included licenses for third-party cameras, with no such restrictions on Synology-branded models. Disk compatibility for this model has not been finalized, but with the new 2025 disk policy, we may see future surveillance-optimized drives, or Synology might permit the use of both their own drives and third-party surveillance-optimized drives.
With all of this, we can also expect, as it was announced, that the future model might include a hybrid version of the surveillance platform as well bringing the best of both worlds together.
Overall, Synology's new hardware, software, and surveillance service lineup clearly indicates its commitment to investing in and developing solutions for both small and large-scale surveillance needs.
