We in the industry have talked about IT’s growing influence in security technology decision-making for a number of years. This year, we have seen the trend accelerate rapidly. Significant changes are occurring in data centre infrastructure technology, creating major disruption to the large enterprise server and storage providers. This is fundamentally changing the way the security industry thinks about IT.
2015 trend – emergence of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
One of the biggest trends to note is the emergence of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). HCI greatly reduces data centre costs and complexity by integrating compute, storage and virtualisation resources into a single software-defined solution deployed on COTS server hardware. Pivot3 pioneered HCI – and its predecessor, software-defined storage – to solve unique video surveillance storage challenges. The goal was to provide the benefits of enterprise-class IT infrastructure – performance, resiliency, efficiency, scalability – without the high cost and complexity.
Impact of IoT on security market
The Internet of Things is also greatly impacting the security and surveillance market. Networked-enabled devices and the need for more actionable data have helped drive increased security spending, even though the overall economy has remained in slow-growth mode for the past few years. Enterprise organisations invested capital cautiously in 2015, but indicators show that 2016 will be the year of technology investments; especially as refresh programmes can no longer wait.
These trends are changing the face of the industry, surveillance and security as a whole. Companies who embrace emerging trends by developing IT-friendly solutions and communicating effectively to IT-focused buyers (whose needs can be slightly different than traditional security-focused buyers) will solidify a role as a leader in the market.
Pivot3 – solving storage needs for IP video surveillance
At Pivot3, we see ourselves as one of these leaders. Our company started out solving a very challenging storage need for IP video surveillance, and we’ve been able to take the lessons learned from surveillance and solve similar challenges in the enterprise, disaster recovery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) markets. We have since brought our knowledge from the IT world back to physical security, helping to close the gap between security and IT and drive new levels of efficiency for customers. Because of this, Pivot3 is experiencing significant growth across our business segments.
Convergence of security and IT
The convergence between security and IT has been a promise for years. Today, the industry is finally seeing this convergence actually occur, resulting in new use cases that derive new levels of value from security data and technologies. This convergence will accelerate technology advancement and innovation, and will be very exciting to witness in the coming year.
See the full coverage of 2015/2016 Review and Forecast articles here
