Pivot3 MiniBank Product Line Examined

This updates examines the features, pricing and competitive positioning of Pivot3's MiniBank [link no longer available] announced in April 2010.

The MiniBank is positioned for smaller scale applications, relative to Pivot3's traditional product offering at the large scale enterprise/government level. The MiniBank is a 1RU appliance that supports up to 4 hard drives. The MiniBank supports a virtual server, allowing VMS systems to be run inside of it without a separate PC/server. Additionally, with a minimum of 3 MiniBanks, the system allows built-in failover/fault tolerance.

The appliance offers a server motherboard, 6GB of RAM with expansion up to 192 GB of memory and 4 embedded GB NIC ports.

A MiniBank appliance with 2TB of storage has an MSRP of $5,995.

An application that Pivot3 recommends for use with its MiniBank is "larger retail outlet or a train station or corporate environment that has 100 cameras and 20 TB of storage needs. Rather than use 2 [traditional VMS servers], use 3 1RU MiniBanks and get failover for both storage and server applications."

For smaller application (under 50 cameras), it is unlikely the MiniBank is minitaure enough to be competitive for most applications. Almost certainly, the redundancy aspect will not be relevant as the additional expense of deploying 3 MiniBanks would be cost prohibitive. Beyond that, a single COTS PC or NVR appliance is likely to provide similar functionality at a lower cost than the MiniBank.

The MiniBank should be contrasted to Intransa's appliance offerings, specifically Intransa's 'Simplicity' line [link no longer available]. Intransa does not offer built-in redundancy/failover. However, unlike Pivot3, Intransa pre-loads VMS software from a variety of vendors. For more, see a review on pricing and positionig of Intransa's comparable offerings to the MiniBank.