When walking into a casino, most people think about how much money theyll lose at the roulette tables and where they can find the nearest cocktail waitress to quench their thirst. But when casino managers and security officials walk into a casino, one of their major concerns is surveillance and data storage.
Surveillance has become top priority on a daily basis for most casinos, and as most organizations are quickly realizing, watching people all day takes up storage space. Even worse, many casinos are forced to store data for a certain amount of time by federal and state regulations, so keeping that data can become an even greater headache.
Unfortunately, many casinos are woefully behind in adapting to the changing storage environment and simply dont do all they can to ensure all of their storage needs are met.
Most of the casinos do not adapt to storage trends at all, writes Scott Bartlett, the original founder and CEO of Southwest Surveillance Systems, which specializes in casino surveillance, in an email. The gaming vertical is very unique and very slow to adapt to technology. Casinos are, in my opinion, running about six to eight years behind the IT business vertical.
Ironically, casinos are storing lots more data than other kinds of businesses. Bartlett was amazed to hear that one major data center in North America houses less data than the average casino.
