Page 30 - Security Today, April 2017

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ing up. What used to require 30 days of re- tention is now requiring 90. What used to require 120 days retention is now requiring one to two years of retention. All over the world, retention times are going up as legal authorities are issuing directives to security managers that require them to provide a lon- ger history in the video record.
While retention times have increased, the technologies surrounding the compression of video data have simply not kept up in the same way. The net effect is that more stor- age is being required, and this means more physical storage. Networks are under strain, IT managers must determine how to move literally millions of bytes of data across net- works that were never designed to support such data transfers, and all users are strug- gling to determine the most economical way to improve and increase retention without breaking the bank.
One of the surest ways to overspend is to be vague to the potential provider of storage about precisely what is needed. The world’s oldest adage is almost always applicable in these cases; if the price seems too good to be true, it most likely is too good to be true. If one storage provider says you need one petabyte, and the next provider says you need 500 TB, the first response should not be “The former is way too much and too ex- pensive, let’s choose the lower number.” The first response should be “Why is there a 500 TB difference between the first provider and the second provider. What’s the difference in their quotes? Which interpretation did each provider use?”
The simplest methodology is often the best, easiest, and simplest way to buy what you need. Get the provider to answer one simple question: “What do you charge me for one terabyte of storage?” You can inter- pret cost per terabyte in a multitude of ways; it can just be the cost of storage with hard drives, it could include the server, it can in- clude the camera, but there is an easy way to break this down and be able to determine cost per terabyte. Eliminate the server, elimi- nate everything else, and look at the cost of
the storage box plus the cost of the hard drive. What’s the cost per terabyte? Such a breakdown gives you a really good idea of whether or not your chosen provider is ex- pensive or not expensive.
Philosophically, storage should be less expensive and not very complicated. Af- ter all, all you really want to do is record your data and be guaranteed that you can retrieve the data once it has been recorded. System complexity is often used as a sales tool. You, the end-user integrator may not understand how complex my system is, and therefore you don’t understand why we must charge as much as we do for the system. Certainly different systems provide different benefits and carry with them ad- vantages and disadvantages, including our own, but what you should be able to do is make a value decision.
Consider this, am I willing to spend more money to use a system provided by Company A over a less expensive system provided by Company, because I am convinced that the valueofCompanyA’ssystemisworththeex- tra money? If you don’t take the time to force all storage providers to quote you based on the same specifications, you render yourself in capable of making a value decision.
The providers of storage systems owe it to the end user and the integrators that ser- vice them to provide the right system for the needs of that end user. You can play a ma- jor role in making sure that you get precisely what you need by forcing us all to play by the same rules. Instead of this being the hardest part of the storage sale, (determining what you are actually asking for) make the hardest part of the sale what it should be. Namely, showing you why my system is going to serve your needs better than anyone else’s and why my Company is a better
choice as a partner than
any other.
Do that and buying storage is easy.
Scott Seraboff is the CEO at Veracity USA.
0417 | SECURITY TODAY
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