What's in Storage for Security Ⅱ

Forward Looking
Storage manufacturers work with designated distributors and system integrators (SIs) in different parts of the world. “Distributors along sales channels offer support primarily in sales and sometimes in integration,” Strong said. “In return, manufacturers provide technical support, marketing materials, sales resources and supply availability to assist the channel partners in penetrating the market.”

Channel partners are often chosen based on their customer reach and breadth in the related fields.

“Our selection criteria are such that SIs complement our IT skills with their skills in physical security,” Yogeshwar added. “We require our SIs to have strong background and experience in the ecosystem that combines IT with video surveillance, alarm and access systems, PSIM and analytics.”

Storage solutions are becoming bigger in size and lower in cost, posing new challenges for product development. “With the way that storage options in general are becoming cheaper and cheaper, it should be about making better and more reliable products for end users at affordable prices,” Kreutz believed. “Lower prices should not come from cutting mandatory costs; offering affordable prices should mean finding new ways for products to perform even at lowered prices, and creative R&D is something that might allow affordable and feature-enriched products to stand out.”

Some feel that storage tends to increase in capacity while remaining constant in price — for instance, a 1 TB drive costing about the same as a 750-GB drive when first released, Maughan said. “Continuously certifying larger capacity storage devices and making them available to end users is one approach. The price of the product typically remains constant while storage capacity increases.”

Lowering prices on hardware does not pose a threat to manufacturers who intend to offer solutions, rather than hardware. “Our position is to sell a solution on its value and not on CPU and capacity,” Yogeshwar explained. “With a better integrated solution, it is possible to move away from commodity pricing.” Promoting the availability of advanced or improved features of higher capacity hard drives is also one way to attract customers, Strong said.

Guaranteeing whole unit integration, warranty and service as a package is more beneficial compared to stand-alone recorders. “Offering a total surveillance solution comprising not only recorders, but also a video management system, video matrix, analytics as well as DAS and archive storage is advantageous,” Clark said. “For enterprise installations, the comfort and ease of having an integrated system with high availability features would be one strong selling point.”

“The knowledge of consumers on what kind of storage product would be feasible with their infrastructure and environment still needs to be strengthened in many cases,” Chou said. “From a marketing perspective, we would like to spend more efforts on educating users the importance of a reliable storage system for their environment. The major challenge faced by our R&D is making products more easily configured, integrated and validated with most popular CMS/VMS on the market.”

The increase in capacity and decrease in pricing for storage cannot continue indefinitely. “It'll get to a point where one cannot possibly squeeze anymore storage into a fixed physical space and just reach a limit,” Harraway said. “One challenge for R&D is to create new technologies that overcome this limit. With considerations such as ease of use and reliability, manufacturers will have to find a way to balance production costs and profit margins.”