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 third of 5 posts in a series about the differences. (The previous were MVaaS Total Cost of Ownership and Managing Video Software).

The third differentiator between an enterprise hosted solution and MVaaS is based on the complexity of the network. In a typical enterprise hosted solution, access to the application is via a VPN infrastructure. I built the first VPN applications in 1992 at ANS (which ran the original Internet backbone called the NSFnet. VPN technology has improved significantly since then (thank goodness), but it is still complex to install and administer, especially in an enterprise with many sites.

Why do you need the VPN? The VPN is needed to interconnect each remote DVR with the managed video application. In addition, the VPN is often needed to provide access to the managed video application itself. The Internet can be a dangerous place for an unsuspecting application. If the web software is hosted in your datacenter, you probably don’t want to open it to the big-bad Internet, unless you really know what you are doing with respect to Internet security.

If you already have a VPN built for your company, then it may be simple to add the application to it. However, if you need to build a VPN, you’re in for a big network project.

In contrast, a typical MVaaS application, by its nature, doesn’t require a VPN so that this work is alleviated.

Access to the MVaaS application is through the public Internet and each DVR communicates with the hosted application directly, so no VPN is needed. This results in a simpler network configuration in most cases.