Surveillance -Taking Iomega to New Heights

Posted On: 10px;">04 Sept, 2012

ITVar News interacts with Rajiv Mukul, Vice President Asia Pacific & Japan Iomega Sales, who gives an insight about the recent surveillance offerings by Iomega, trends shaping up the surveillance market, company plans to tap this market, and with other vital details.

ITV News: Tell us in brief about the recent surveillance offerings by Iomega. What is the USP of Iomegas surveillance range products?

Rajiv Mukul: With the Video Surveillance industry getting more organized and digitized, creating a demand for cost-effective IP surveillance solution comes as a natural progression for Iomega. Today, a large number of SMB businesses in the retail, manufacturing, professional services, and branch networks of distributed companies are adopting surveillance solutions. Therefore, seeing the huge potential in the surveillance market, Iomega partnered with MindTree Product Engineering Services and Tulip Telecom to launch its video surveillance storage management solutions for the SMBs and distributed enterprises. The cloud solution involves Iomega StorCenter network storage devices, Tulip's national broadband network with cloud data centers, and MindTree video management software.

Our association with MindTree provides MindTree Limited SecureMind Surveillance Manager video management system (VMS) application on all Iomega StorCenter network storage devices. The SecureMind Surveillance Manager is a feature-rich, ONVIF ready, easy to install, robust application that works seamlessly on the Iomega StorCenter network storage device. The device plus MindTree SecureMind solution delivers a feature-rich video surveillance management application, enabling users to manage surveillance activities while simultaneously storing the video. Choosing from hundreds of different camera manufacturers, the StorCenter unit plus SecureMind combination supports up to 48 cameras and up to 36TB of storage capacity per device. Solution highlights include:

Simple installation and configuration
View Live Video from anywhere using a web browser
Support for hundreds of H.264, MPEG4, and MJPEG IP and USB connected cameras for monitoring your office premises
ONVIF 2.0 Ready
Activity-based recording with Activity Alerts
Timeline mode for easy viewing of recorded videos
Video Loss and Tamper Alert Detections
Alert-Me reporting of Alerts via email
Control and Configure Cameras Remotely
Search and playback with Timeline view

It is primarily a surveillance solution that removes the need to put any high-end server/ storage/ software infrastructure surveillance in a box. For a 4-IPcam setup, the entire solution, including good brand cameras, could cost less than Rs 30,000. Iomegaâ€™s StorCenter px and ix Series deliver the innovation and ease-of-use to optimize video surveillance installations from four to 48 cameras per device at a fraction of the cost of traditional DVR/NVR installations.

ITVN: How Surveillance Division of Iomega has contributed to the overall growth of the Company?

RM: Our venture in the surveillance division has contributed immensely to the overall growth of our company. Over the past few years, the focus of Iomega business in India has transformed. So far we have been focusing on selling personal storage products through our retail customers, but now we are targeting SMB companies with higher capacity products and our NAS technology. The shift has been from B2C to B2B. We have transformed our next-generation NAS devices into cloud servers that help users access data from anywhere. Today, India has a colossal SMB footprint. Hence, the opportunity is enormous especially, with video surveillance solutions being adopted by a large number of SMB in professional services, retail, and manufacturing, as well as by the branch offices of distribution companies. Iomega has been able to move the growth needle with this market opportunity. We have entered the surveillance segment at the right time and today 50% of Iomega business comes from IP surveillance. We are selling 1500 units per quarter.

ITVN: What kind of trends are shaping up the surveillance market?

RM: One of the key trend shapings in the surveillance market is that enterprises across verticals are moving towards IP-based surveillance. They are looking at moving more of their services to the IP platform. In a recent market study, IMS Research found that the network India video surveillance market is currently valued at $26.1 million and is poised to grow to $89.2 million by 2013. The projections clearly depict the huge growth being witnessed by this segment. Surveillance as a service is another important trend that many manufacturers are hopeful will help them net the SMB or residential market that is still predominantly dominated by low-end analog manufacturers. Besides this, High definition video (HD ) over Coax has been struggling despite the potential largely due to compatibility, scalability, and storage issues, which are now being addressed industry-wide, proactively. So, the existing analog base stands a good chance of moving to HD over the next two to three years, depending upon the pace of such developments.

We also see strong demand from households not only for periphery but also for internal surveillance. The concept of smart homes is gaining popularity and with more working members in a household, people today are looking at video surveillance as an option to monitor the security at home. The Iomega, MindTree, and Tulip solutions also look at serving this segment and we believe we are well prepared to serve this opportunity of smart homes or in fact smart cities.

ITVN: What is your say on the shift happening in the video surveillance market from analog to IP surveillance systems?

RM: The video surveillance systems are being deployed in the Indian market for the past several decades. These surveillance systems can be classified as analog-based surveillance systems and IP based surveillance systems depending on the underlying technologies over which the solutions are deployed. According to 6Wresearch, the India Video Surveillance market is expected to reach $952.94 million by 2016, with a CAGR of 32.49% from 2011-2016. In 2011, though analog-based surveillance systems have accounted for the majority of the share i.e. 67.80% in the overall market IP based surveillance systems are expected to grow with a relatively higher CAGR of 41.78% from 2011-2016. In India, an analog-based surveillance system dominates the video surveillance market. However, the shift towards digital technology-based IP surveillance systems can be traced as a recent trend and these surveillance systems are finding its space across industry verticals, namely, retail, manufacturing & warehousing, homeland security, government & transportation, and banking & finance.

Like every industry after an interval undergoes a technological shift, this trend of IP surveillance overtaking analog surveillance can be understood from a simple example of LCD & LED versions of TV taking on old generations of TV over a period of time. The reasons why and how IP is gaining traction are multi-fold. To begin with, cloud technology is one of the game-changer for the IP surveillance segment as cloud storage has simplified things for both big enterprises and SMBs, thereby reducing the cost of overall systems. Besides this, remote monitoring, favorable ROI, reliability, and security of the deployment and enhanced functionality are some of the factors that are expected to drive the IP surveillance market. Overall, the contribution of IP surveillance in the video surveillance market is increasing the demand for better quality recording, scalability, and support from organized players. Pertaining to the present market scenario, it would not be wrong to say that the IP surveillance technology is emerging as the next-generation technology of the surveillance industry as it is flexible based on high-functioning and affordable network cameras and is highly reliable.

Through our partnership with Tulip and MindTree, we to looking redefine video surveillance technology by delivering high performance, low-cost all-in-one IP solutions targeting small businesses and distributed enterprises.

ITVN: How fruitful has been your partnership with Tulip Telecom and MindTree?

RM: Our partnership with Tulip telecom and Mindtree has been very fruitful. In our partnership, Tulip Telecom act as a one-stop-shop for its customers for all their data services need. It also serves the products sold to customers when needed and enable Iomega StorCenter plus to reach 2,400 businesses that Tulip is serving with its nationwide broadband network. Similarly, MindTree provides its SecureMind surveillance manager video management system application on all Iomega StorCenter network storage devices. The market for surveillance has been largely focused on the enterprise market and has not fully addressed the needs of SMBs and the Indian consumer. Through this partnership, we have been able to provide superior yet economical local cloud video surveillance solutions for SMBs and distributed enterprises. We have successfully managed to redefine video surveillance technology by delivering high performance, low-cost all-in-one IP solutions. A change in the attitude of SMEs has been noticed as they realize they need for storage, security and surveillance and with our low-cost one-stop solution, the response we have received in the market has been incredible.

ITVN: What are your immediate plans for tapping the potential of the surveillance market?

RM: With the advent of intelligent video, surveillance is now not just restricted to the sphere of security, but is also emerging as a tool for gathering business intelligence and other applications. The surveillance industry is undergoing a major technology shift, i.e, the older, analog technology-based CCTVs are now giving way to IP based (digital), open-source, and fully integrated systems. These IP-based surveillance cameras are gaining good momentum owing to superior technology features and affordability. The market opportunity for surveillance is immense and we at Iomega are bullish on NAS with IP surveillance solutions. To begin with, we have joined forces with Tulip Telecom and MindTree to offer cloud-based video surveillance storage management solutions focused on the Soho and SMB segments. The association has helped us reach 2400 broadband network users of Tulip to expand our NAS footprint. With Central Home Ministry diktats to the managements of malls, hotels, and other public places to install CCTVs and store video footage, a new window of opportunity has opened and since performance is very critical in such projects, the storage would be done by using SMB NAS. Thus, Iomega aims to redefine video surveillance technology by delivering high performance, low-cost all-in-one IP solutions targeting small businesses and distributed enterprises.

The strategy is to tap the market with technological innovation. Further, we also see strong demand from households not only for periphery but also for internal surveillance. The concept of smart homes is gaining popularity and with more working members in a household, people today are looking at video surveillance as an option to monitor the security at home. The Iomega, MindTree, and Tulip solutions also look at serving this segment and we believe we are well prepared to serve this opportunity of smart homes or in fact smart cities. There will be a 3 pronged focus on surveillance from Iomega:

Private VSaaS (small companies with one or many offices locally managed internally)

Public VSaaS (surveillance hosted by a third-party service provider)

Hybrid VSaaS (mix of the two above based on the need of customer)

ITVN: What is your current channel strength? Are you planning to further intensify your channel base?

RM: With respect to our video surveillance solutions distribution, we are working with a new partner in the Video Surveillance area like Anixter and announced our foray through a service provider with Tulip. More such programs and relationships will be announced this year as we take a charter to grow the business 300% in India and overall increase the size of this market segment. Besides this, Redington and Neoteric are our distributors in India for many years now and have positively contributed to penetrate and create Iomega reach. 50 + partners have already been signed for the IP surveillance business.

We believe that our success in India is directly correlated to the efforts that we put in to continuously strengthen our relationship with our channel partners. They are a key pillar of our strategy and are critical in providing us the market reach while being best positioned to counsel the customer. Our pillars of commitment are twofold to create a fresh value proposition to increase TAM for our partners and to increase their bottom line. Iomega has been able to create a large base of 1,000+ partners who are helping us reach over 40 cities across the country. For our NAS range of products, out of our partner base of 860, we focus on our 200 NAS partners, and our aim is to add another 100 small SI partners by end of this year specifically for our surveillance solutions. With this, we also see a great business opportunity for channel partners, as well as the market for video surveillance, which is fast-growing, and the opportunity is open for all sections of the business.

ITVN: How is the company positioned currently and what kind of market share do you anticipate in the future?' RM: Iomega is a worldwide leader of innovative storage solutions for small businesses, distributed enterprises, and home offices. Today, Iomega's portfolio includes industry-leading network attached storage solutions, including unique offerings for Video Surveillance, Virtualization, and Cloud Backup solutions; a broad selection of portable and desktop hard drives; multimedia drives that make it easy to view video and Internet content in the living room; and a one of a kind backup device for smartphones.

The focus of Iomega's business has transformed from the consumer segment to the SMB segment in the past few years and this transformation is a result of the market opportunities we have explored. Our focus is research and development on building products, software, and services that provide a business owner, with the most flexibility possible, and all our product range, be it NAS or our surveillance solutions look at delivering exactly that. Currently, the growth agenda for Iomega is:

Video Surveillance and delivering it as services to customers in addition to a point solution

SMB Back up and Replication connecting individual office and ROBO environments

The unstoppable Computing infrastructure for SMB using virtualization and delivery at a low cost.

While we can't really comment on the market share, but 50% of Iomega business comes from IP surveillance and we are targeting to be no 1 in the market.

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