This is the 3rd post in a series about the three paths a customer can take when trying to deploy video throughout their company: Build, Buy or Subscribe.

This post will address the 2nd path – Buying a video system.  This path is by far the most prevelant path chosen by customers, hands down.  The reasons the overwhelming majority of customers choose this path are pretty straight-forward: first, per my previous post on Building, not that many companies can really do this; and second, in a bit of foreshadowing to the next post, Subscribing is an option that companies have really only recently had available to them – although the emergence of MVaaS is changing this.

Buying a video system is a pretty straight-forward thing to contemplate.  You find a video provider (could be a local electrician, a mom and pop video provider, a big name like ADT, an integrator like Red Hawk, or any number of others)  A sales rep comes to your location, scopes out the project with you and quotes the install and equipment prices for you.  Once you commit, they’ll do the installation and get you all set up.  Service after the initial installation varies depending on the provider and what you paid for – many are happy to provide service contracts for long periods of time.

What doesn’t change is that you now own the system, much like you’d own a home entertainment system or a computer that your purchased for your home.  You are covered by a warranty and you always have a technical support line that you can call if you have problems.  Having said that, it is squarely your responsibility to ensure your system is working.  You have also locked yourself into the current version of the technology - even if you bought bleeding edge technology, something new is going to come out in a few quarters that will be an improvement over what you’ve purchased (which is why I hate buying PCs!)

So other than it being the only realistic choice for the last few decades, why would a company choose this path?  I’ll ignore the case where the company didn’t know that they had an alternative.  Assume a company knows it can Buy or Subscribe – why would they want to buy?

They like to own things. This type of company is a lot like the one I mentioned in the last post that loves technology in that this often a philosophical view that can’t be changed.  The big difference is that this category often has a lot more fact or logic based rationale for wanting to own.  Maybe they have a bunch of cash and don’t like to pay over time, preferring to get a discount for upfront payment.  Maybe they are concerned about security or proprietary information and like to run their own gear.  While the underlying concerns may not be based on accurate information (security can actually be more tight in a Subscribe model than it is in a Buy model – topic for later post), the concerns are real for the customer and often lead them to choose Buy.

They can (or at least think they can) manage the deployment.  This is really two buckets of customers.  The first have enough IT experience and resources to be able to effectively support the deployment and management of the video systems.  They can manage the distribution of client software to hundreds of laptops and computers and can manage all of the access (which users can access which systems for what purposes) without issue.  Some video systems are easier to manage than others so maybe the one that they have chosen doesn’t place undue burdens on them or their company uses it infrequently enought that it doesn’t matter anyway.  The second bucket of customers can’t say with confidence that all of this is true – but they either believe they can manage or have no idea yet how difficult it will be so don’t factor this into their decision.

There are likely hundreds of other reasons why people Buy – it is the de facto standard in the world of video.  In tomorrow’s post I’ll tell you why I think this is about to change.