Hot cloud storage company Wasabi Technologies has introduced Wasabi Surveillance Cloud (WSC), a solution that enables organizations to offload video surveillance footage from their local storage environment directly to the cloud without running out of capacity. This “bottomless” approach to video storage is vital for managing large amounts of video in high-resolution environments, increasingly large file sizes, stringent regulatory and retention requirements, and business and analytics applications tied to surveillance. 

Users of every major video management system (VMS) can offload infrequently accessed video from their on-site servers directly to Wasabi hot cloud storage, which is more affordable than cloud vendors like AWS S3, Google or Microsoft Azure, with no fees for egress or API requests, according to the company. The video data is kept “hot” so it’s always available and retrievable within milliseconds. 

“Many organizations make significant technology investments for video surveillance, but often the video and data storage architecture is put under immense pressure,” said David Boland, vice president of cloud strategy, Wasabi Technologies, Boston. “Wasabi Surveillance Cloud allows the industry to take advantage of the best of cloud and on-premises for a truly bottomless storage solution that supports the exponential growth of video data.” 

Andy Schreyer, chief sales marketing officer at Stone Security, a Wasabi integrator based in Salt Lake City, Utah, said more end users are demanding products like WSC because many of their other IT systems have also moved to the cloud. “With WSC, we appreciate the ability to offer a hybrid cloud storage solution that helps customers explore and transition to the cloud at their own pace by extending on-prem storage to Wasabi — reducing their on-prem footprint while maximizing their storage capabilities,” he said. 

Part of the product’s attraction to end users is the fact that it’s VMS and device agnostic, Schreyer said. “Other cloud solutions are proprietary, which severely limits technology choices,” he said. “With WSC, we can select the right surveillance technology for our customer rather than only the 5- to 10-camera models that the competing cloud solutions offer.” 

Other advantages include disaster recovery and storage extension capabilities, with data immutability ensuring an additional layer of data protection; and a hybrid architecture that allows customers to maintain on-prem infrastructure while leveraging the benefits of cloud architecture, he said. 

WSC is simple to download and install, taking only five to 10 minutes, with no reboot required. Features include high-performance playback that’s “so immediate that the VMS thinks the data is sitting locally,” he added. And real-time display of replication status ensures the data that's sitting locally is also stored safely in the cloud in the event of on-prem failure, Schreyer said. 

Flat-rate pricing also makes budgeting easier for customers. “Wasabi conveniently charges based on storage capacity,” he said. “This per-terabyte pricing mode helps the customer predict their storage costs and ensures they’re only paying for the storage they intend to use. Furthermore, as the customer adds cameras or requires additional storage, Wasabi allows the customer to add more storage to their existing contract.” 

Finally, WSC is a great way for integrators to grow their RMR. “Wasabi’ channel-friendly pricing model allows customers to purchase their monthly storage usage upfront via an annual or multi-year contract; this way, we can predict the total revenue we're generating on a monthly and even annual basis per customer,” he said. 

For more information, visit Wasabi