When China Merchants Bank wanted to improve staff service quality, it realized that having the right surveillance storage system was a key consideration.
When China Merchants Bank wanted to improve staff service quality, it realized that having the right surveillance storage system was a key consideration.
Conventional PC-based hard disk drives (HDDs) are not engineered for the rigorous demands of bank surveillance storage systems, which require round-the-clock operation, high availability and reliability.
China Merchants Bank learned this when it found its PC-based HDDs were losing video data. The bank used surveillance digital video recorder (SDVR) solutions to monitor banking operations and staff service quality in its branches. But there were problems, and the bank turned to Seagate for better SDVR reliability.
First set up in Shenzhen in 1987, China Merchants Bank has grown to be a regional bank with branches in more than 30 cities in China and Hong Kong, and with more than 500 business networks. The bank thinks constantly of serving its clients better and a service quality improvement initiative was the use of SDVR systems in key banking operation areas and customer service points in all branches to monitor staff service quality.
Not long after the deployment of these systems, China Merchants Bank realized there were performance issues due to the mismatch of the PC-based HDDs to SVDR applications. While these drives performed adequately at first, they were not optimized for SDVR operations. The rigors of round-the-clock usage in the SDVR systems caused excessive stress to the PC-based HDDs. Higher power consumption and heat output affected the drives' performance and led to lowered data integrity in affected disk sectors, data loss and drive failures. Adding to the problem was the fact that China Merchants Bank had many surveillance solution providers who used different brands of HDDs. The result was differences in HDD reliability for each branch, with no way of knowing which PC-based HDD might break down next.
China Merchants Bank decided to consolidate all future surveillance storage solutions to one HDD brand for quality control and easy inventory. It switched to new surveillance-based storage solutions to boost the reliability of its SDVR systems. The bank adopted the Seagate SV35 Series drives in new and existing SDVR applications in its branches and head office.
¨Technically, the SV35 Series drive was a natural choice. We also based our decision on positive past experiences as we had used Seagate storage solutions previously. The surveillanceoptimized SV35 Series drive was also highly recommended by our vendors,〃 said one representative of China Merchants Bank. Seagate provided good service and greater cost-effectiveness, ensuring the quality of its HDDs through better storage and delivery facilities. Another advantage was lower cost of ownership for the bank, by buying the SV35 Series drives directly from Seagate, instead of through middlemen.
With the Seagate SV35 Series, China Merchants Bank has overcome the limitations of non-surveillance optimized HDDs and benefited from much more reliable SDVR systems as well as improved data integrity of its surveillance footage.
Product Adopted:Digital Video Recording