In my last post I gave some highlights of customers conversations at this past week’s NRF LP show.  I also talked to a number of current and potential channel partners for MVaaS services.   While there are a number of potential channels that weren’t represented at the show, there were a couple channel segments that were represented.

Traditional security providers

I’d like to see the marketing budgets at the companies as they are at every loss prevention and security show I have ever seen, and when they go, they bring at least a dozen people with them.  It either speaks to the amount of business that they do in this space or to an industry-wide lack of concern over expenses.  I’m guessing the former.  These companies sell video, access control, alarms, etc to the retail and restaurant providers.  They have all been around for a long long time and have deep personal relationships with the industry practioners.  They are all very familiar with video.  My general experience with this category of partner, which was consistent with the conversations at the show, is that these guys understand the market, see the value of MVaaS (particularly the recurring revenue piece) but are a little uncertain how to proceed.  Their biggest challenge is the installed base of traditional DVRs that they have in place.  They want an MVaaS solution that can work for their customers on their existing DVRs.  This speaks to the need for standards on how to communicate across vendor platforms, something the MVaaS industry really needs to tackle to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Remote Monitoring Companies

I talked to several service providers that put eyes on video for their customers.  They provide remote guard services, operational audits and just about anything that a customer would want them to watch.  Some are evolving out of the central monitoring station model and are looking to expand the breadth of their services and see MVaaS and the integration with POS and other systems as way to add more value for their customers.  Others are entering the space using offshore monitoring resources.  These guys definitely get it.  Their challenge is incorporating an MVaaS solution into the central monitoring software and systems they are already using to monitor video and alarms so that they don’t have to use their legacy systems and a separate MVaaS service.  Again, this speaks to the need to have some communication standards in the industry so that MVaaS services can be easily integrated into some of the common central station tools, such as MAS.

There were a number of other potential partner segments at the show, but I’ll cover these in a subsequent post as they aren’t traditional channel partners.