2008 will be remembered as the year that Envysion introduced the concept of Managed Video as a Service (“MVaaS”).
The concepts behind MVaaS might have been talked about in other venues over the past few years. Talk, though, is cheap. Actions are louder than words. Envysion’s 2008 contribution was in actually proving the MVaaS concept. With customers! With partners! With industry experts, as illustrated through the many awards Envysion received. And, most importantly, Envysion showed that the approach works at scale! One customer alone has several 100 of locations operating on the same platform that supports Envysion’s other customers. The bottom line–MVaaS works and Envysion has emerged as the unchallenged leader in the space.
To appreciate the magnitude of Envysion’s 2008 accomplishment, the benefits that MVaaS provides to customers must be understood. These benefits expand the role of video cameras in the helping customers increase profitability.
Traditional video surveillance is a security tool. Video is used infrequently, because it is stored on a special-purpose system. Few individuals have permission to use the systems and those who do must receive training. Most systems require that the user travel to wherever the system happens to reside. That is, if you want to get video from a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the lost prevention manager probably has to hop on an airplane to take a look. If the traditional system is Internet accessible, the link is cumbersome and problematic. In many cases, Internet accessible is not used by the customer because it will interfere with other applications that rely on the same broadband pipe and because it is hard to use. Upgrading a traditional system requires box by box software or hardware updates-the result is locations are on different releases and upgrades become people and dollar intensive. Other key features of MVaaS-such as linkage to other business data, centralized video storage, and easy sharing of video-are simply not doable in any meaningful way with traditional approaches.
MVaaS changes all of this. Like other software as a service products, the application sits in the network. An intuitive web browser interface is the way the video is accessed. You do not need training to use Google, and you do not need training to use Envysion’s product.
Google upgrades its service on a frequent basis. It adds a feature or a whole new application set. Google’s users do not need to “upgrade” their service-they simply see the changes the next time they log in. Likewise, Envysion’s MVaaS service allows frequent enhancements that just appear in front of the customer. And these features apply to all locations at the same time-not intrusive or people intensive upgrade projects are necessary. This is huge.
I’ll pause for now and, in a subsequent blog post, will further expand on the significance of Envysion’s 2008 accomplishment. But before I sign off this blog post, I want to congratulate the Envysion team on what they have accomplished. MVaaS is hard to conceive and even harder to implement. In 2008, the Envysion team did both. We proved the approach works. We proved it results in benefits to customers that allow them to improve their brand identity and bottom line profitability. No doubt much remains to be accomplished, and a future blog post will focus on this. But let’s first reflect on all that we achieved in 2008. Let’s take the time to celebrate the birth of MVaaS. Let’s be proud that Envysion has emerged as the leader in this space. Thank you and congratulations for making this happen.
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