Closed-circuit television(CCTV)
CCTV, closed-circuit television, is any camera system whose picture is sent to a limited set of monitors or a recorder rather than broadcast, and it is the term most UK buyers and installers use for what a US buyer might call video surveillance. It covers everything from a single doorbell camera to a multi-site network of IP cameras recording to the cloud.
The term predates IP cameras and the cloud by decades, from the closed circuit that carried an analog signal to a single monitor on site. It stuck as the everyday name for the category even as the technology underneath it changed completely, which is why installers, guarding companies and buyers in the UK still say CCTV where a US site might say video surveillance or a VMS.
A modern CCTV system can be almost entirely cloud based: IP cameras stream over the network to a service that records, stores and serves the footage, with no recorder on site. Installers and monitoring companies sometimes call this specific case cloud CCTV, to distinguish it from a system that still records to a local NVR.
Camzify is a cloud video management system that runs on the CCTV cameras a site already has, adding AI detection and scheduled patrol rounds on top of recording and playback. It is not a CCTV installer or a camera manufacturer, and it does not use or claim the term to mean anything other than what it already means across the industry.