The market for external storage devices used in video surveillance applications will eclipse $750 million by 2012, mainly because 3.3 exabytes of storage will be required to store video footage, according to a recent report by IMS Research. One exabyte is equivalent to one million gigabytes.

“As more and more video surveillance moves onto the network and end users specify higher resolution cameras and longer retention times, the need for additional storage capacity is skyrocketing” says Alastair Hayfield, a market analyst with IMS.

Titled “World Market for External Storage Used for Video Surveillance,” the report suggests even some modest surveillance projects today require more storage capacity than can be provided by a DVR. This is particularly noticeable where end users want to significantly expand their systems or upgrade to higher resolution cameras.

External storage appliances, and in particular SANs (storage area networks), are likely to be the next step forward in the evolution of video surveillance storage. IP SANs offer improved scalability, storage reliability and storage retention. Each time more capacity is required, a storage appliance can simply be plugged into the network. End users can also scale performance and capacity separately. Since the processing power needed to manage the storage is no longer carried out by the NVR or DVR, fewer of these devices are required to manage the same number of cameras.

Although the security industry is served by only handful of companies from the video surveillance and IT industries, the report forecasts rapid growth in the network video surveillance market. More storage companies are expected to enter the space either by themselves or by partnering with existing video surveillance equipment vendors.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!

Related Content