Pivot3 sees record growth in 2016

AUSTIN, Texas—Pivot3, a storage solution and hyper-converged infrastructure provider based here, saw record growth in the first six months of 2016—a result of ongoing higher demand and advancing technologies in the video surveillance space.

“We have experienced substantial, very exciting growth here in the last couple of years,” Brandon Reich, Pivot3's senior director, surveillance solutions, told Security Systems News. “We've invested heavily in the business, and to drive that growth we are continuing to grow our video surveillance solution set.”

The company experienced a 103 percent increase in revenue, as compared to the second half of 2015, Pivot3 announced this week. The company also added on 400 new customers in the first half of 2016, bringing its total installed base to around 2,200, according to Reich.

Ongoing trends in the video surveillance industry were key factors in the company's growth, according to Reich. “In the last few years … the demand for video has skyrocketed,” Reich said. These cameras are being used in a variety of applications, he said, such as proactive, reactive, and even for non-security applications.

“At the same time as a whole bunch of cameras being demanded, you're seeing the camera technology increase—you're seeing very, very high resolution cameras out there,” Reich said. “Those cameras are generating much more data than they used to, and customers—end users—for various reasons are storing and retaining that data for longer periods of time.”

Video data is being used for different purposes, Reich said, such as video analytics or business intelligence. “Not only are we generating much more data, [and] storing much more data, but data is much more important to us.”

Retaining data for longer periods of time and utilizing it for different reasons means that “customers are facing huge challenges with how they capture data as it's generated, how they store and protect that data over time and ensure that data is never lost,” he said. “Those are the problems that we originally designed our solutions to solve.”

Reich said that Pivot3 grew though partnerships with “some of the most influential providers in the industry,” such as Convergint and Tyco IS.

Pivot3 has grown substantially in the last six months, in part, by adding employees. The company expanded its employee base by about 40 percent in this time, bringing the total to about 230. Bill Stover, formerly of Micron technology, was among the recently hired, joining as the company's VP and CFO. Stover joined the company around the beginning of June.

Pivot3 recently released its vSTAC SLX, the first offering that combines Pivot3's offerings with the technology from NexGen Storage, which it acquired in February. “The benefit for … an end user of the SLX is we enable them to run all types of different applications, including video surveillance, in their data center on very cost-effective hardware platforms,” Reich said.

Pivot3 has customers in 53 different countries with a “strong presence” in North America and Latin America, Reich said. He identified the Middle East and Asia as growing markets for the company.