Video surveillance has evolved beyond its traditional function in physical security and become a powerful tool for business intelligence and operations. As security requirements grow and organizations deploy more cameras, they are also using them to extract operational insights.
But with growing deployments comes the need to store video data. As operators in the Middle East invest in larger networks and generate higher volumes of higher-quality footage, their ability to store and manage that footage becomes a deciding factor in system success. Operators, especially those in critical industries such as oil and gas, transportation and data centres, need to carefully consider their approach to storage, given what security means to their businesses.
Simply buying more capacity is neither sustainable nor the only option. With the right approach, video storage can make an organization more resilient and its physical security systems more efficient.
A growing and accelerating flow of data
In the Middle East and Africa, the market for IP cameras is expected to grow year-on-year by more than 13% by 2029, driven by the use of the technology to counter security threats, meet regulatory requirements and support large infrastructure development projects.[1] Meanwhile, geopolitical instability is prompting organizations to rethink their security infrastructure. Data centres, now a core component of Gulf economic diversification agendas, face a materially higher risk profile and demand both heightened protection and resilience.[2]
That brings us to smart surveillance, which is important not just for new projects and infrastructure rollouts, but for upgrades to existing infrastructure. The result can be camera networks spanning hundreds or thousands of devices — and those devices are not solely for security. Axis surveys point to increasing adoption of video systems for business intelligence and operational efficiency among our customers.[3]
With those networks comes the need for storage, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. And with it, an important question: how much storage does a system need, now and in the future?
Capacity meets compression
The value video surveillance now delivers beyond security is largely due to advances in camera technology, particularly those that improve image usability. Modern cameras resolve people and objects across a far wider range of lighting and environmental conditions than their predecessors. They achieve this through higher frame rates, greater pixel density, and on-board analytics that turn raw footage into structured data.[4]
Organizations want to extract as much value as possible from what their cameras capture, but doing so means producing and storing more data. As they record more high-quality, forensic-grade footage, their storage requirements climb.
That conflict can be avoided. Video compression methods now allow operators to preserve image usability while reducing storage.[5] Algorithms identify objects and regions of interest, apply the appropriate level of compression to each, and reduce the bitrate transferred when a scene features little or no motion.
Consider a realistic critical-infrastructure site: 100 cameras at 4K resolution and 15 frames per second, recording continuously against a 30-day retention policy. Encoded conventionally, that deployment produces a formidable volume of stored video. Apply intelligent compression together with H.265 encoding and the same policy — the same cameras, the same retention, the same forensic detail at the moment it matters — can reduce storage requirements by 40 to 50%.
Quieter scenes do considerably better than that; a server hall or a fence line at three in the morning compresses far more aggressively than a loading bay at shift change. But even across a mixed site, the arithmetic holds. The camera count hasn’t changed. The retention requirement hasn’t changed. What’s changed is how much of that month is spent recording an empty corridor at full fidelity.
In practice, a camera watching a server room in a data center or a storeroom at an oil refinery prioritizes footage containing movement or anomalies. That reduces unnecessary data and makes systems easier to scale. Operators can add devices without immediately running into storage constraints.
And advances are still underway. AV1, the open, royalty-free codec, is now supported in cameras built on the latest generation of system-on-chip — in Axis’s case, ARTPEC-9 — and delivers better compression efficiency again. Because it carries no licensing fees, AV1 removes a cost layer that has quietly shaped codec decisions for years. For cloud-connected deployments, native browser support simplifies how footage reaches the people who need to review it.
AV1 will not displace H.265 overnight. It arrives with new hardware rather than through a firmware update, and retention policies and installed infrastructure move slowly — rightly so. But for operators planning systems on a ten-year horizon, which describes most critical infrastructure in the region, the codec roadmap is now a legitimate input to procurement decisions rather than a footnote.
Data storage is now a measure of enterprise resilience
A surveillance system is only as reliable as its weakest recording path. If every camera streams to a single server and that server, its network link or its power supply fails, the footage from that window is simply gone. Furthermore, it tends to be gone precisely during the incidents that stress infrastructure hardest.
This is why distributed architectures are displacing purely centralized ones. Cameras fitted with surveillance-grade SD cards store video at its point of origin. This reduces dependence on additional servers and recorders, improves the responsiveness of on-board analytics, and allows cameras to trigger automated alerts directly.[6] Crucially, edge storage can run in parallel with the operator’s video management system, so a network outage becomes a gap to be backfilled rather than a permanent hole in the record.
Specifying edge storage well is a discipline in itself. The right card for a given camera depends on three factors: the sustained bitrate it must handle, the retention period the use case demands, and — especially in the Middle East and Africa — the thermal environment it will live in. A camera housing on an exposed gantry through a Gulf summer is not a benign place for consumer-grade flash memory. Surveillance-grade cards are built for continuous write cycles rather than occasional bursts, and the better ones report their own health. Thus, a degrading card announces itself long before it fails silently and takes a week of footage with it.
This is the detail that separates a system that performs well on day one from a system that still performs well in year five.
As critical infrastructure in the region faces evolving threats, the security infrastructure protecting it is evolving too. The same is also true for how operators understand the role of video data. Working closely with vendors and system integrators, operators can redefine that role, unlock new opportunities and build more resilient organizations through optimized data storage.
[1] Middle East And Africa IP Camera Market Size & Competitors
[2] The Middle East war is testing the Gulf’s ambitions to become AI hub
[3] Strategic insights into the future of video surveillance | Axis Communications
[4] Quality with a purpose | White paper|White papers
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