My last posts MVaaS and Enterprise Hosted Video Compared and Managed Video as a Service Explained, introduced the difference between MVaaS and Enterprise Hosted Video as well as the common benefits they both provide. This is the second of 5 posts in a series about the differences. (The previous was MVaaS Total Cost of Ownership).
This second post discusses the implication of managing software at your premise versus the SaaS model.
When video management is hosted by the enterprise, the IT organization takes on full operational ownership of that software. There are several advantages of this situation. First, the IT organization has complete control over change management. All modifications to the software such as bug patches or minor/major version upgrades are implemented by the IT staff. As such, they can be easily coordinated with other projects.
However, this benefit of Enterprise hosted video may, at times, be a problem. Over the past few years, I have met with entry level, mid level, and senior level IT staff from dozens of retail chains. There is one common theme to all of the people I have met: they are up to their ears in alligators and don’t have time to take on a new project. The implication of this is that they generally don’t have time to perform the management tasks of an Enterprise video system and so the software itself slowly rots. This software rot not only can cause failures of existing capability but usually results in very slow introduction of new features as well.
MVaaS solves this problem by outsourcing all of the software management into the network. Users never encounter outdated software because they run the version in the network, which is continuously improved and advanced.
What about the software that resides in the DVR? I think the same general argument applies. Enterprise hosted video systems can provide mechanisms to automatically upgrade remote DVR software. But, just as above, IT time staff will be required to initiate the upgrade.
MVaaS systems can provide remote DVR upgrade as part of the service offering and thus provide the same benefits as described above.
Therefore, if your IT staff are overburdened, MVaaS may provide an opportunity to add video management without adding to their daily work load.