In general, video surveillance deployments can be broken down into five basic environments: banking/finance, casinos/gaming, retail/commercial, corporate, government (internal security, law enforcement). Benefiting all of these environments, the prodigious capacity and enhanced reliability of purpose built surveillance hard drives enable SDVR systems to deliver a comprehensive range of features and capabilities - higher image quality, more active cameras, longer video archiving, and intelligent video surveillance.

White Box Storage Solutions – Another emerging segment is the white-box storage solutions segment. Specifically, this refers to the backup requirements, managed and networked storage solutions catering to the lower-end SMB and small network offices – those where the number of users is 16-20. To address this market segment, we are enabling our channel partners to put together such white box solutions by integrating Seagate drives with appropriate third party software solutions.

Consumer Electronics – Rapid acceptance of digital entertainment and a need to store those files in an inexpensive medium is accelerating HDD integration into consumer electronics (CE) products. Improved broadband speeds enable home networking, which effectively lets consumers tap a PC's hard drive for storage. Media distribution power houses contribute to a growing collection of digital media, making it attractive for consumers to purchase digital entertainment devices to store their favourite songs and movies at ease. As devices like digital audio players and digital video recorders become more popular and mainstream, digital content has grown at a rapid rate, spurring the demand for huge storage capacity at affordable cost.

Hard disc drive (HDD) technology is quickly gaining acceptance as a storage meduim for CE vendors. With the phenomenal gains made in aerial densities over the last few years, the emergence of technologies enabling smaller form factors, and continued improvement in economies of scale, HDDs are seeing rapid adoption into portable consumer electronics products that had been previously limited to flash memory.

Gaming – The gaming market, both with portable devices as well as networked/web-based gaming, is just taking off in a big way. HDDs for the gaming devices demand a combination of capacity and size. Next generation gaming consoles are increasingly utilizing hard drive technology to enable a more satisfying and exciting gaming experience. Gaming consoles with an embedded or attached hard drive are capable of delivering a more comprehensive set of features than those without hard drive storage. Such HDD-powered devices allow gamers to download digital content – such as game levels, characters, maps, weapons and vehicles, game demos, video trailers and audio files; support their custom music playlists in every game; store video messages from friends; and save games. In addition, hard drives enable gamers to purchase digital content for a much richer and robust gaming experience.

According to In-Stat, worldwide console and handheld online gaming subscribers could exceed 30 million by 2009.

Recently Consumer Infoline talked with Mr. Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Seagate Technology, who pointed us about the various activities of Seagate in Indian Market.

Activities of Seagate In Indian Market

The Asia-Pac market is really very exciting for Seagate Technology, as nearly 44% of its revenue is being generated from this region. Recently Seagate has achieved a milestone of having shipped One-Billion hard drives. This landmark has come 29 years of its existence. However the explosive rate of growth, globally, is such that the company believes to achieve its next billion within five years. Today, Seagate considers India as a key focus area in the Asia Pacific market as India is a fastest growing market in this region.

From the geographical point of view, Seagate is witnessing the fastest growth rate in the smaller cities of the country- B, C, and D class cities. Recently the company has initiated a program to set up Seagate branded retail access points at such emerging locations. Today nearly 70 such access points already exist and are rapidly growing in number. The company expects about 100 access points by close of this year.

According to Mr. Rajesh, In India, the core or traditional market (i.e. PC and enterprise storage segment) continues to grow and is still the prime segment in volumes. Apart from focusing on primes segment of storage market, Seagate is equivocally focusing on surveillance market as an important emerging vertical, and in order to grab a substantial market pie in this segment, Seagate has set up a channel network within the framework of its Seagate Partner Program (SPP). The company also expect the branded-retail segment (i.e. drives for end-users) to become a boom area.

The third segment on which Seagate is focusing is on the white-box storage solutions segment – specifically catering to the lower-end SMB and small network offices – those where the number of users is 16-20. Speaking on this front Mr. Rajesh articulates,” We are enabling our channel partners to put together such white box solutions by integrating Seagate drives with appropriate software solutions and address this market segment. With over 42 different product lines across varying capacities – the industry's widest range – Seagate is well positioned to serve any opportunity that comes up.”

Product In The Arsenal

With more than a quarter century of industry expertise, Seagate continues to be the driver of innovative solutions for the storage industry. Today no one matches Seagate's breadth of solutions. With 42 product lines covering home computing to enterprise data centers, Seagate delivers advanced solutions for every industry that requires digital storage.

Personal Computing – Today's on-demand world requires more computing performance, mobility and reliability than ever before. Seagate delivers award-winning products for both desktop and high-end PCs, as well as laptops and mobile computing devices. Innovative technologies such as perpendicular recording and full disk encryption elevate today's personal computing experience.

From the Maxtor stable, Seagate also offers the most extensive portfolio of retail branded storage solutions to address the needs of the small business, home and home office. From pocket and pushbutton backup drives to personal servers and network storage solutions, Seagate enables you to get the most out of your business and personal content in the office, at home or on the road.

Seagate's Barracuda ES range for desktops; Momentus for laptops (including the Momentus PSD hybrid storage drive); FreeAgent and Maxtor OneTouch 4 branded retail products fall under this category.

Consumer Electronics (CE) – Seagate has been at the heart of the consumer electronics revolution since its beginning. As the leading hard drive supplier for the CE market, Seagate offers storage solutions specifically designed to meet the demands of a number of increasingly sophisticated CE applications. Whether it's advanced gaming consoles, digital video recorders, portable media players or automotive GPS systems, Seagate hard drives enable CE manufacturers to develop next generation devices for today's consumers.

The Seagate drives for gaming applications (LD25, Barracuda ES/2); those for digital home applications for DVR/IPTV (Pipeline HD, DB35); are under this category.

Surveillance – Digital surveillance systems share one fundamental trait – they rely on hard drive storage to house their copious quantities of video data The Seagate Barracuda ES/2 optimised for surveillance applications; the ruggedized EE25 range; the SV35 are Seagate products servicing this market.

Enterprise – Enterprise applications are the backbone of storage for the world's data. Businesses today are being challenged to reliably store, manage and protect vast amounts of information. With a broad range of products optimized for fast-growing enterprise applications, Seagate is the leader in delivering best-in-class, innovative enterprise storage solutions. Seagate hard drives enable mission-critical storage systems to run cooler, faster and more reliably, helping businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Seagate's Barracuda high Capacity drives, the Cheetah, Cheetah NS and Savvio range are all products in this segment. The Savvio range now comes with upto 1TB capacity in industry-leading SAS interface for the most performance-intensive enterprise environments.

Channel Engagement

Seagate believes that Channel Partners are key element of its business process. Today, Seagate has got an effective distribution network that enhances the availability of Seagate products across the country.

Currently, Seagate has got four national distributors, namely Ingram Micro India, Redington India , Fortune Marketing, and Supertron Electronics. The four distributors have a combined total of 100-plus offices and about 650 tier-2 dealers/channel partners throughout the country, addressing customer needs across geographies, industry segments and verticals.

Speaking about the channel engagement program Mr. Rajesh says,” We are constantly seeking to enhance market opportunity for our Channel partners. For instance, in the last year, Seagate Partner Program (SPP) in India saw the introduction of a sub-category dedicated to the digital surveillance and security market, the SSPP. As of now, we have added 60 members in this category of partners, opening up an entirely new market for them.”

About Seagate Premier Partner (SPP) program

The Seagate Premier Partner (SPP) program is a comprehensive channel support activity in India for the channel community wishing to become authorized dealers of Seagate products. Currently, there are more than 650 SPP members from India 's major metro cities and smaller towns. As it is an ongoing initiative, the market opportunity determines where and how the channel community chose to become a part. Seagate has set no limits on the number, wherever a business opportunity arises.

The process of becoming an authorized SPP member was simplified with Seagate's online registration service. SPP members enjoy the following benefits:

•  An interactive web portal for easy access to the latest value-added product and marketing information, training sessions and customer support at http://spp.seagate.com

•  Dedicated toll-free hotline for pre- and post-sales support for faster access to product, technology and marketing information;

•  Early access to Seagate's latest hard disc drive products through a special market evaluation program;

•  Attractive incentives designed to increase profitability for Seagate channel partners;

•  An online Returns Management System that allows for faster, more efficient and more convenient management of product warranty returns;

•  Access to the latest Seagate marketing materials for cost-effective marketing tool development;

•  Access to the quarterly “Cool Bytes” eNewsletter and Storage Solutions Catalogue which provide the latest news on products, technology and the storage market.

In The End

Seagate will continue to look at the core market of desktop and enterprise storage drives, as the largest in terms of volume. As already indicated, surveillance segment and the white box solutions segment are upcoming. The company expects to see some growth in the consumer electronics and gaming areas in years to come.

For year 2008-09, Seagate expect to ship 300 million hard drives globally, or around 10 hard drives every second.