In my last post I highlighted how quickly a business can benefit from viewing video.   I gave a couple real life examples of how some of our customers have been able to obtain insights almost instantaneously by having the right people view video at the right time.

If you are new to the video space, this may seem like a pretty impressive capability.  However, if you have even a little bit of experience with traditional video surveillance solutions (and because you are reading this blog I’m guessing you do) you are likely saying, “yeah sure I get the point, but this is a blog about MVaaS and even the most limited DVR with remote access can give you that same benefit - does MVaaS do anything differently to enable this?”

I’ll use the same two examples to make my argument that yes, MVaaS does enable a higher level of value than a traditional DVR solution in even this basic capability.

Let’s start with the first example.  In that example, the CEO looked briefly at video of a specific site and pointed out a violation of their standard store layout.  Had that CEO looked at that same video from any system, whether it was an old traditional DVR or an IP camera that was streaming directly to his browser, he would have gotten that same insight.  In this regard, an MVaaS solution is no different.  What IS different with an MVaaS based solution is the likelihood that that same CEO will look at video from additional sites in the future.   MVaaS solutions eliminate the complexity and manual activity surrounding the set up of users and access.  When we showed the CEO one of his sites, all we did was log in as the CEO (who had been set up to have access to all sites in the company’s domain) and he immediately had access to all of his locations, without having to add individual sites, without having to know a single recorders’ username or password or IP address.  If the company was expanding and adding sites, no one had to do anything - as soon as the new site came up and the CEO logged in again - he would see the new site.  With many traditional DVR solutions, a user gets access to a new site by adding that site to the software that they have downloaded onto their computer and configuring the username, password and sometimes IP address of the new location.  It is highly unlikely in that scenario that a CEO will have access to all of their locations at any given time unless someone is hijacking his laptop every time they build a new location and every time the company needs to change the log in information for an existing site.  By simplifying the adminstration of access rights and eliminating any manual configuration required, MVaaS ensures that the right people (in this case the CEO) have access to all of the right locations when they want it.

In the second example, I discussed having shown two LP professionals a video clip of the cash handling in one of their locations.  Again - this is not rocket science, had the same LP professionals seen the same video from a traditional DVR, they certainly would have made note of the same issue.  What I didn’t talk about was where we were when I showed them the video and what we did with the video to ensure that they could save it and share it with their operations group.  We happened to be at NFSSC (a major loss prevention conference) in Dallas and I was showing them the video on a computer that was part of our trade show booth in the middle of the hotel conference center.  Before you get all riled up, yes I understand that many DVRs can be accessed via the web from pretty much anywhere and that this is not unique to MVaaS.  The differentiation I am speaking about came after we saw the video.  We had logged in as one of the LP folks and were looking at one of her sites.  We found the incident and then wanted to save the clip so that she could review it with management the next day when she returned from the show.  She didn’t want to leave the clip on the recorder at the store location and the file would have been to big for me to download to the trade show PC (I didn’t have a thumb drive and their email server wouldn’t let a file that big through)   So instead, we saved the video clip into the network (into her secure MyClips library) with a description and some comments so that she could access it when she returned and share it via a link with others that she wanted to see it.  The file upload happens in the background, so she logged out and left before it was even finished.  MVaaS, as opposed to most traditional DVRs, not only enables users to access their video from anywhere, but also enables them to share video by saving it off of the recorder into a secure and private library of clips that the user can share and distribute as they see fit.