Storage Market Size Examined

As part of a press release for a manufacturer [link no longer available], IMS Research cites that the "storage market for physical security environments is a robust billion-dollar market." Since storage in video surveillance is deployed in many different ways and often with video surveillance software, this begs the question of what is included in the market.

In an e-mail, IMS Research clarified their categorization of this market to include external DAS, internal DAS (on COTS servers), IP SAN, Fibre Channel SAN, NAS as well as Enterprise DVRs/NVRs, SMB NVRs and external storage supplied by video surveillance vendors.  A notable exception is the exclusion of 'low-mid' DVR category defined by IMS as not being capable of full frame rate/resolution recording and missing multi-terabyte storage, video analytics, etc.

While storage may be a billion-dollar market, most vendors target specific sub-sections of the market (IP SAN, NAS, NVRs, etc.). Also, some recorders are included while others are not. Whether this is right or wrong, applying these numbers should factor in that segmentation.