The Impact of Video Surveillance Data on Physical Storage Media: Applying the Appropriate Storage Technology to Each Application

This IDC Perspective discusses the impact of video surveillance data on physical storage media and the importance of applying the right storage technology to each application. It highlights the growth of video data, the different storage architectures, and the dependence of video architectures on storage. The content also provides advice for technology buyers, discussing the pros and cons of different storage media such as hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), tape, and cloud. It concludes by estimating the storage relevance to the video data architectures.According to Mike Jude, research director for IDC's Video Surveillance and AI Video Analytics, "Video data utilization is now constrained not by video capture devices but by the infrastructure necessary to store and process such data. The various applications for video data may require multiple storage architectures, based on different storage modalities."Ed Burns, research director for IDC's Hard Disk Drive and Storage Technologies, notes, "Video storage depends on applications and whether the data needs to support immediate needs or longer-term analysis while considering the cost per terabyte of the storage solution. A storage solution that cannot accommodate the video data generated by video surveillance applications will not deliver the benefits that such data can deliver."Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president for Solid State Drives and Enabling Technologies, also notes, "SSD can be an ideal storage device for video surveillance because of their performance, reliability, and energy efficiency. Ultimately, the use of an SSD-based solution will be driven by performance considerations within the cost constraints of each use case."