Video Surveillance Transforming Into Data Source

The increased viability of surveillance  video as data will be an opportunity  for growth and development

Pivot3 2014/2015 Review and Forecast:

It was a solid year for the industry – not great, but not bad. The state of the economy and less U.S. government grant money for surveillance in the last year held the security industry back overall. 

There were two interesting trends as it relates to server/storage infrastructure for video surveillance. First, the proliferation of DAS solutions in the United States. SAN products are the most widely accepted enterprise solutions for surveillance video. However, both VMS manufacturers and integrators are pushing harder-to-manage, unable-to-grow and non-failure-resilient DAS. Integrators appear to be pushing this because of the lower cost. Previously open software-only VMS manufacturers have now introduced their own low-end DAS storage systems. This trend is not in the best interest of end users who want an easy-to-manage, scalable and highly available systems. Second, more and more IT departments are supplying server and storage infrastructure, which causes traditional security integrators to give up revenue, and also, the end-user customer ends up with more expensive, non-video-optimized systems. 

Unexpectedly, the growing trend of open vendors moving toward closed systems was unexpected. The introduction of hardware offerings by previously all-software VMS manufacturers is one example. The danger is moving toward vendor lock, which results in more expensive and less flexible systems.

Surveillance video increasingly will be looked at as Big Data that can be analyzedto bring value to the top line of the business – as opposed to data whose primary purpose is to be used by loss-prevention departments. With this trend, more and more IT departments and IT technologies will utilize surveillance video as a data source. Technologies such as virtualization, hyper-converged infrastructures and big data analytics will be much more important for video surveillance.

Traditional security manufacturers who align with an open approach to allow integration with these IT technologies will be the winners in the industry. Traditional security distributors and integrators will be the losers, and IT distributors and VARs will emerge as winners in this trend.

Business in 2014 has been good for Pivot3. We will post revenue growth of greater than 50 percent in a market that hasn’t grown anywhere near that level. Two big areas of success in 2014 have been customer base refreshes and growth in the Middle East market. In 2015, we expect continued growth in North America, Latin America and the Middle East, along with renewed success in Europe. Our success will be fueled by new, more cost-effective technologies, further sales and marketing investment, and new technology opportunities for our channel partners. We also will take more of a leadership role in educating the market on the adoption of IT technologies optimized for video surveillance.

The security industry is poised for renewed growth because of heightened awareness of our value, combined with new technologies. Second, new technologies and new ways of looking at surveillance data will be disruptive to the traditional security ecosystem players, which mean opportunities for new players adapting to new technologies and approaches. The increased viability of surveillance video as data to be transformed into information providing significant value over just loss prevention will be an opportunity for growth and development.

See the full coverage of 2014/2015 Review and Forecast articles here