USA: A new report by IMS Research has identified huge potential for external storage used for video surveillance. In the 'World Market for External Storage Used for Video Surveillance' study, IMS Research forecasts that by 2012 this market will be worth over $750 million.

IMS Research forecasts that in 2012, 3.3 exabytes of storage will be needed to store video from new surveillance deployments. This is a phenomenal amount of data and external storage will play a key role in managing this information.

"As more and more video surveillance move onto the network and end-users specify higher resolution cameras and longer retention times, the need for additional storage capacity is sky-rocketing" says market analyst, Alastair Hayfield.

DVRs provided a step change in terms of capacity and recording quality when compared to analogue recording systems. However, even some modest projects today require more storage capacity than can be provided by a DVR. This is particularly noticeable where end-users want to significantly expand their systems or upgrade to higher resolution cameras.

External storage appliances, and in particular SANs, are likely to be the next step forward in the evolution of video surveillance storage. IP SANs offer improved scalability, storage reliability and storage retention. Each time more capacity is required, a storage appliance can simply be plugged into the network. Furthermore, end-users can scale performance and capacity separately.

Since the processing power needed to manage the storage is no longer carried out by the NVR or DVR, fewer NVRs or DVRs are required to manage the same number of cameras.

Currently, this market is served by a handful of companies from the video surveillance and IT industries. With the rapid growth seen in the network video surveillance market, it is likely that more storage companies will move into this space either by themselves or by partnering with existing video surveillance equipment vendors.