Efficient and Energy-Saving Server & Storage Solutions

Pivot3 started out in 2003 with the intention of radically simplifying servers, memory and networks and making them more affordable. It was the first manufacturer to bring a complete Pivot3 V-Stac storage & server solution especially for digital video surveillance and rich media onto the market. GIT-SECURITY.com spoke with Dieter Kondek, Vice President and General Manager International at Pivot3, about his company and about modern memory technology.

Mr. Kondek, Pivot3 is a very young company - it was only founded in 2003. What can you do that others can‘t?

Dieter Kondek: Although Pivot3 was founded in 2003, the first products were delivered in 2008 after almost five years of development of the Pivot3 V-Stac OS software. Pivot3 is the first manufacturer to have brought a complete virtualized storage & computing solution specially for digital video surveillance and rich media onto the market. Pivot3 has become market leader for iSCSI storage solutions in video surveillance in less than three years.

What are your main products?

Dieter Kondek: Pivot3 currently offers three different V-Stac product families: V-Bank, Cloudbank and Databank. Pivot3 Databank is a pure storage product that can be used for SAN, NAS or DAS. Cloudbank was developed for the IP video surveillance market and is used as an iSCSI SAN with integrated server. V-Bank can be utilized as a hybrid server/storage system for IP video and IT applications and is delivered with the VM-Ware virtualization software and can run multiple applications in parallel on one device. An example of this would be a VMS application, a video analysis software, an access control application, a Microsoft Exchange application and a backup program.

Could you give us a typical application example?

Dieter Kondek: Together with its partner VCS Observation in Holland, Pivot3 won the project for the video surveillance of all railway stations in Holland. This project has a volume of over 6,000 cameras in the final stage and around six Petabytes (thousand Terabytes) of storage for the recordings. The customer has saved c. 20-50% of his energy costs through the Pivot3 solution. And because the video management software (Genetec Omnicast) runs directly on the Pivot3 Cloudbank appliances, the purchase and running costs of more than 60 external application servers could be saved, which represents a significant portion of the entire project budget. In addition, the customer got a completely redundant system with automatic VMS failover, and that for a lower cost than if he had used traditional servers with storage or maybe NVRs. Another example is the substitution of a traditional DVR/NVR system for around 200 cameras in one of the Swiss prisons. The video recording was interrupted twice a week because the system was not redundant and also there was no automatic failover function. Using the Cloudbank solution, on which the Milestone X-Protect VMS runs today, the customer has a completely redundant system including automatic failover for X-Protect - for a low investment and with low running costs.

You have just introduced the new „1U and 2U CloudBank stand-alone Appliances"?

Dieter Kondek: These products are physically the same as our Cloudbank products and can be used as so-called stand-alone products for smaller projects of 10 to 50 cameras, although they can be later connected to our standard products in an array. These systems are therefore scalable and above three systems they are fitted with automatic failover. These products are delivered complete with the software (V-Stac OS, V-Stac Director, Windows Server and VM). The price for these systems, with all the advantages of the Pivot3 vSTAC appliances, is comparable to traditional DVRs and NVRs of other manufacturers that are not redundant and scalable.

How will the subject of memory develop in your opinion? What qualitative changes will there be, and over what time frame do you think?

Dieter Kondek: SSD memory will increasingly be used, as already in our V-Bank product as cache memory, although it is still much too expensive for general use as data memory. We will see the first standard SATA disk products with 3TB by the end of this year. The subjects of cloud storage and video hosting will continue to be hotly discussed over the coming months and years. Pivot3 has already won many companies as video hosting customers and the need for efficient and energy-saving server & storage solutions is rapidly increasing.

You work together with a network of partners. What sort of companies are these?

Dieter Kondek: Pivot3 currently has ten employees in EMEA and two training and spares centers in England and Dubai. We have built up an ECO system with a network of large and medium-sized system integrators and we also work together with some distributors, such as Santec Video and Controlware. Our aim is, together with our Open Platform Technology partners in the business of VMS, cameras, wireless, video analysis and PSIM, to offer a complete ECO system for modern IP video surveillance, whereby Pivot3 contributes the storage & compute V-Stac platform. We have currently certified more than 30 different VMS systems on our V-Stac storage & compute platform in our Pivot3 Applab.

Are you planning to expand this network?

Dieter Kondek: Yes, we are always looking for additional partners who want to realize state-of-the-art IP video projects together with us and who are embarrassed to offer old-fashioned video solutions based on proprietary systems.

Mr. Kondek, many thanks for the conversation.