Seagate Technology celebrates ten years in the security industry this year. With a commitment to innovation, the company is all set to meet the fast-changing customer demands in the coming years.
Seagate Technology first came into the security surveillance scene in 2006. The company, which already had extensive experience designing HDDs for various other purposes, was able to quickly identify what was lacking in storage for surveillance. Working closely with major surveillance systems manufacturers, it studied the requirements further, and set out to create what was to become a game changer for the video surveillance industry. In February that year, the company released its first surveillance-optimized HDD, SV35, with up to 500 GB storage space and 23 days of continuous recording option.
This year, Seagate celebrates 10 successful years in the security industry, in each of which it contributed to revolutionary innovations in surveillance storage solutions. Looking back at the early days, BS Teh, Senior VP of Global Sales at Seagate notes that entering the security industry was one of the most important decisions Seagate had ever made.
“Because of a lot of engagement with our key customers like Hikvision and Dahua, we realized that it’s a very unique market that’s different from the standard consumer setup box-DVR application,” Teh said. “We worked with the customers to understand the usage model, and worked internally in our design centers to conceive the idea and bring out the product itself.”
Ground-breaking advancements in surveillance HDDs
Over the last decade Seagate has invested heavily in R&D for surveillance storage, keeping up with the fast-changing demands of increased video quality, number of cameras and analytics. In the video surveillance industry, it’s normal to see innovations in cameras receiving most of the spotlight, but Seagate’s development over the years shows how critical it is for HDDs to evolve, to ensure cameras and surveillance recorders reach their potential.
We work with customers to understand the usage model, and work internally to conceive the idea for the product.
-BS Teh, Senior VP, Global Sales, Seagate Technology
For instance, video resolutions have kept increasing since Seagate first entered the market. To match this, the company has boosted HDD capacity over the years. As NVRs began gaining popularity over DVRs, in 2014, Seagate updated the SV35 HDD with features to support network video segment and up to 4 TB space. This was increased to 6 TB in the same year. In October 2015, the company launched its 8 TB Surveillance HDD, first of its kind in the market.
Seagate's data recovery service provides an
extra layer of protection for the data.
Such technical advancements are not the only highlight of Seagate’s growth. In fact, a key service the company has offered in its ten-year journey was the Seagate Rescue Service (SRS), a data recovery service for Surveillance HDDs. As more end users began to migrate to IP technology, protecting recorded data became a vital issue. A back-up disk alone was neither a comprehensive nor a cost-effective solution.
Understanding this problem, Seagate began to offer its customers an in-house data recovery service. This made the company a one-stop storage solution provider.
“In our discussions with the customers, the security and importance of preserving recorded data came up as a key issue, and since we had the technological capability, we thought it was a great way to leverage it and offer it to our customers,” Teh said.
From an industry player to market leader
Since its entry into the surveillance market, Seagate has gone beyond its principal role as a technology solutions provider, to take up more proactive leadership roles, promoting applications and standards to aid the overall growth of the industry.
“Two examples of such initiatives that we have taken can be seen in China,” Teh said. “In March 2014, Seagate and a few leading Chinese security companies and institutions worked in collaboration to establish the Security Surveillance Storage Innovative Technology Industry Alliance. Besides driving the development of the surveillance market, the organization coordinates and exerts its members' resources and capabilities, and standardizes the storage for security surveillance, thus boosting the technology R&D and product innovations. More recently, we became a founding member of an association for unmanned aerial vehicles, in an attempt to understand and define the right storage solutions in this sector.”
Winning with the right relationships
Seagate’s ten-year journey in the security industry has definitely centered on its technological advancements and services, but a major factor behind the company’s success has always been robust relationships with partners. At every step in its progress, the company has given priority to market needs. This is evident in the responses from its customers and partners.
“Increasingly our business customers are looking for solutions that provide features and insights they may not necessarily know they need and that requires an understanding of the pain points and the right technologies to address them,” said Xu-dong Guo, VP of Hikvision’s China Marketing Center. “We are proud to continue our long standing relationship with Seagate, a partnership that has evolved over the past 10 years.”
Jian-jun Zhang, GM of Sales Center at Dahua, took the point further. “Selecting a technology partner is critical in the surveillance space,” said Zhang. “The right partner has to be intimately familiar with the market needs and be able to deliver the technology and scale to exceed expectations. Seagate’s experience and product selection are critical to help Dahua strike that effective balance.”
Moving forward committed to efficiency
According to third-party market research, the video surveillance storage market is set to grow at a CAGR of 22.41 percent from 2015 to 2020. Several Asian emerging economies are expected to embrace security technology in the coming years, and new technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) are set to offer a paradigm shift for the industry.
For Seagate, in a nutshell, the future will see “bigger and faster” products. The last ten years in the security industry have been quite eventful for the company, and the coming years are expected to be no different. The surveillance market’s demands will constantly evolve. Seagate, on its part, is committed to consistent innovation to meet those demands, and strive to raise the bar in storage solutions.