Storage makers gather alliances

LAS VEGAS-Pivot3, a storage manufacturer dedicated to the video surveillance market, announced at ISC West its High-Definition Storage Alliance program, which has gathered 30 IP surveillance vendors as certified members. As members, they can receive pre-sales configuration assistance, system installation support, post-sales support and joint marketing. Not to be outdone, storage maker Intransa announced its Security-Grade IP Video Storage Certified designation, with 31 certified vendors. Intransa set up its StorAlliance Technology Partner Lab in its San Jose, Calif., R&D center and tested vendors to make sure they could integrate successfully with Intransa's EdgeBlock edge recording platforms and StorStac central repository and multi-site IP video storage platforms. Similarly, Pivot3 has a dedicated application lab that provides configuration assistance and simulation tools, a sales engineering team that offers on-site installation assistance for seamless deployment, and an operations team that can pre-stage key components. Both programs are part of a clear spotlight now being shone on the security industry by storage makers looking for a new marketplace for their wares (see story on DNF's new security play, this page). "It's been an interesting process for people to realize how strategic the storage piece is in their success going forward," said Lee Caswell, Pivot3 co-founder and chief marketing officer. He and other industry veterans note that storage is often as much as a third of a surveillance bid, yet many integrators don't consider the storage until late in the design process. Yet Caswell claims Pivot3 storage, because of its distributed architecture, where all of the storage "boxes" can be controlled through the network, "simplifies the whole quoting process, which allows a new class of reseller to participate." No longer do you have to do a bunch of math to figure out exactly how many boxes you'll need from the outset. "You can reconfigure things on the fly," said Caswell. Adam Shane, manager of technology at AMAG, one of the first manufacturers to sign on with Intransa, appreciates Intransa's edge solution. "The real challenge with storage is limiting the streaming," Shane said. "We do storage at the edge with a modular solution." The simple message vendors like Intransa and Pivot3 hope to get across, said Caswell, is that "in large-scale deals, the storage really does matter, but what we do is really complementary to the large-scale integration providers ... Over half the market is distributed environments with limited cameras, where an NVR with fixed capacity makes sense. Where we play is centralized environments where we can off-load the really complex storage pieces. We can get those resellers access to a world-class storage system." ssn