Subscriber Discussion

How Important Is Scalable/ Separable/ Centralized Storage In The Market As Opposed To An Appliance Approach?

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Meir Lehrer
Feb 19, 2019

Hey Folks,

New to the group. Seems like a lot of really meat-and-potato discussions going on. Since I'm still undergoing 'immersion training' in the market segment itself, can you guys give me your take on how important scalable/separable/centralized storage is in the market as opposed to an appliance approach?

Thanks!

Meir

NOTICE: This comment was moved from an existing discussion: Milestone 2017 Financials Examined

JH
John Honovich
Feb 19, 2019
IPVM

Meir, thanks for your first comment. I've made it its own discussion so people can see and respond.

From a total unit and dollar standpoint, the appliance or single server (software / computer / server all-in-one) is the most common.

However, scalable / separable / centralized storage is more commonly used and more important in larger scale projects. There may only be 1 of these projects for every 100 systems but that 1 system may need hundreds of TBs or a PB or more storage.

These types of systems are generally sold and supported differently. Hope this helps and happy to expand.

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Meir Lehrer
Feb 19, 2019

Thanks John. Very helpful insight. When you say that such systems are generally sold and supported differently (atypical to 99/100 VMS sales), how is the storage portion acquired, integrated (with VMS's involved) and installed in such cases? Is this usually via an outside SI (system integrator) or in-house handled and built by the end-customer? Who makes the purchase decisions in such large deployment scenarios?

JH
John Honovich
Feb 19, 2019
IPVM

Let's contrast it to small systems first. An 8-channel system is typically sold by a small installer without any consultant, manufacturer and minimal to no IT involvement.

In bigger systems, their tends to many players with the size of each one's role varying somewhat amongst them. Examples for bigger systems:

  • A consultant might be involved to specify or recommend storage.
  • Salesperson and SEs from the VMS provider may be directly involved, if not to directly sell but to make recommendations including which storage they support or recommend.
  • The camera manufacturer salespeople are likely involved (again even if sold through the channel) advocating their offering as well as potentially recommending which partners (including storage to use).
  • The IT department is likely to be involved, perhaps buying the storage directly or approving what may or may not be bought.
  • The storage manufacturer likely need to have its own salespeople involved to maximize chance (especially if they are a niche manufacturer, i.e., not DellEMC) of acceptance. Like the VMS provider, even if the storage manufacturer sells through an integrator ultimately, the storage manufacturer really needs to have their own salespeople involve to pitch and push the user to pick them over others.

Net/net, if I was selling storage for big video surveillance systems, I would want to build relationships with end users directly as well as with consultants, camera and VMS providers to maximize my chances of winning such big deals.

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Michael Silva
Feb 19, 2019
Silva Consultants
  • The IT department is likely to be involved, perhaps buying the storage directly or approving what may or may not be bought.

As a consultant, I would strongly second this point. In most cases, if an end-user is big enough to need an external storage system, the IT department will have a large say in the selection process. Almost always, they will have a specific brand and system that they have standardized on for business use. It is a very hard sell to get them to move to another product for video surveillance, despite any claims that the proposed new system is "optimized for video".

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JH
John Honovich
Feb 19, 2019
IPVM

A new report related to this discussion: Sales Cuts At Rasilient.

I also quoted Michael's comment here as I agree about that challenge.

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