Megapixel cameras continue to put demand on storage, but not in a virtual world. So you really have to hand it to Pivot3® Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. Here’s a company that swooped in from the IT side of the business to focus solely on the security marketplace—back in 2003 when storage was not as much of an issue as it is today—although there were definitely rumblings that storage would be the next big challenge. According to the Information Week Analytics 2010 State of Enterprise Storage Survey, when asked about their top storage concerns, nearly half of the respondents said they have insufficient resources for critical applications. Contrast that with last year, when data loss was the top concern of the technology professionals the magazine surveyed.
Times have changed and so has the market for surveillance storage and suffice to say it will continue to evolve. Pivot3 is poised to grow exponentially—and I think that’s just what is going to happen. They have a formula—it’s all about education—and they have a strong go-to-market strategy with new investment money targeted at additional staffing and marketing here and abroad. If you’re not familiar with the company you should be. After all, efficient and effective storage of video will become paramount as we continue to move to a high-resolution, video-centric world. Lee Caswell, founder and chief marketing officer saw it coming and in his infinite wisdom didn’t try to shove the company’s products or philosophies down the throats of the reseller marketplace, instead he has been working tirelessly with other Pivot3 folks to educate the marketplace and by way of recent events it seems his work has not been in vain.
The company has won numerous awards for its virtual servers and scalable storage, and recently announced it has raised some $25 million in a new funding round, and that’s quite a substantial amount even for the surveillance industry. This investment is slated to help expand the company’s national and global footprint—so watch this company grow. Here are the most recent announcements on Security Info Watch: http://www.securityinfowatch.com/Manufacturers+Announcements/pivot3-receives-25m-funding http://www.securityinfowatch.com/Manufacturers+Web+Exclusive/with-25-million-new-funding-pivot3-focuses-future
“We’re ready to scale our solution up and out to the marketplace,” Caswell said. “To date, the company has been funded with some $73 million from investors and venture capital firms—and this round of funding is going for growth here in the U.S and in Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East,” he said. Plans are to double the size of sales staff and hire other engineers and also to latch onto suitable partner programs as well. Vertical markets are extremely important, Caswell said, but moving forward traffic and transportation and even retail venues will see increased attention for the company’s products.
“During the last three years, storage sales for the industry as a whole have tracked down some 14 percent,” commented Caswell. “We tripled our sales last year alone,” he said. Pivot3 products rely on RAIGE or RAID across Gigabit Ethernet architecture. In 2008 Pivot3 launched the Serverless Computing product line, the first and only storage solution to consolidate server applications into an IP SAN platform. “Today, there is the expectation that high quality video is going to be there as part of the solution,” he said.
