A&S Magazine, the leading international security industry magazine for professional buyers, launched into 2016 with a cover story titled “10 Years in Security: Seagate Leads on Innovation.”
Why did the magazine choose to focus on Seagate?
Seagate just passed our tenth year leading the industry’s development of surveillance-optimized storage, so we’re taking the opportunity to highlight these advances, along with those of many of our partners — leaders who develop the security systems that help stop various bad actors around the world, from home burglars to terrorists to drug traffickers to bank robbers.
The A&S article calls Seagate’s product development efforts “a game changer for the video surveillance industry,” describing how Seagate more than a decade ago, as the R&D leader storage technology, worked with the security industry to identify the then-current and future requirements, and figured out what capabilities storage technology would need to support future systems that would utilize more video inputs, faster streams and ever-higher-definition video.
Storage advances change the game
“Over the last decade Seagate has invested heavily in R&D for surveillance storage, keeping up with the fast-changing demands of increased video quality, number of cameras and analytics,” says the article. “In the video surveillance industry, it’s normal to see innovations in cameras receiving most of the spotlight, but Seagate’s development over the years shows how critical it is for HDDs to evolve, to ensure cameras and surveillance recorders reach their potential.”
A&S decided to illuminate Seagate’s innovations, the company’s focus on anticipating market developments, and its strengths building relationships with partners. They look at how a strategic focus on the right storage for the application serves the increasing demand for smarter security and surveillance infrastructure.
“Because of a lot of engagement with our key customers like Hikvision and Dahua, we realized that it’s a very unique market that’s different from the standard consumer setup box-DVR application,” says BS Teh, Seagate senior VP of Global Sales, in an interview with the magazine. “We worked with the customers to understand the usage model, and worked internally in our design centers to conceive the idea and bring out the product itself.”
What new technologies and features do security systems need?
The article describes many of the technological features, capacity increases, and specialized service offerings Seagate pioneered — and the industry response to them. “Increasingly our business customers are looking for solutions that provide features and insights they may not necessarily know they need and that requires an understanding of the pain points and the right technologies to address them,” says Xu-dong Guo, a vice president of Marketing for Seagate partner Hikvision. “We are proud to continue our long standing relationship with Seagate, a partnership that has evolved over the past 10 years.”
The piece emphasizes the critical importance of working closely with partners to assess, understand and respond to their needs. “Selecting a technology partner is critical in the surveillance space,” says Jian-jun Zhang, a general manager at Dahua, a leading security systems company and a Seagate partner. “The right partner has to be intimately familiar with the market needs and be able to deliver the technology and scale to exceed expectations. Seagate’s experience and product selection are critical to help Dahua strike that effective balance.”
How to define industry standards
Going beyond individual customer relationships, the article says, Seagate stays actively involved in technology development and standards bodies, and even helped to establish the Security Surveillance Storage Innovative Technology Industry Alliance, an organization that coordinates and member capabilities working to standardize the storage for security surveillance, which serves to further boost technology R&D and product innovation. “More recently, we became a founding member of an association for unmanned aerial vehicles, in an attempt to understand and define the right storage solutions in this sector,” notes Teh in the interview.
To learn more about what’s driving growth in the video surveillance storage market — “set to grow at a CAGR of 22.41 percent from 2015 to 2020,” according to the article — and to understand more about Seagate’s goals and special capabilities, read the full article in A&S Magazine.
For guidance on what hard drives are the best fit for your own systems and solutions, or to learn about business growth opportunities in security systems and how IT Executives and Surveillance System Integrators are managing video surveillance systems, video data, and leveraging video footage to improve operations, security and other aspects of their business, visit our Video Surveillance System Storage center.
