Hello to the Managed Video as a Service community. I’m Carlos Perez and I recently joined Envysion to lead our Product and Marketing efforts. I am excited to join the great team here at Envysion and look forward to bringing our innovative managed video as a service solution and story to the marketplace.

I thought I’d kick-off my participation in the MVaaS blog with some thoughts on a subject that is now very near and dear to my heart – adoption of Managed Video. For any given innovation, much like prognostication on the stock market, we all see and hear differing perspectives from analysts and solution providers on what any given year holds. Already we have dueling perspectives for Managed video in 2010. Will it be a ‘breakout’ year (IMS)? Or will adoption be ‘gradual’ (Honovich)?

For me a useful reference point in thinking through the pace of adoption with a product & marketing lens is with our old friend Geoffory Moore and his ‘Crossing the Chasm’ take on the adoption curve. I won’t waste time here with a synopsis of the book, instead I’ll cherry pick out a few key challenges Moore might identify if he were to examine Managed Video adoption. In doing so I’m suggesting that Managed Video as a Service currently sits with ‘early adopters’ in Moore’s model.

So putting aside investment (agree that $ is a factor) and presuming that core technical aspects of managed video are sound, where would Moore point to as key areas that will determine if adoption will be rapid or more gradual, in particular with the pragmatic ‘Early Majority’? My take (admittedly early days) is Moore would point to three key areas:

1. Value delivery and value clarity. Sounds easy right? Execution is harder. Pragmatists in the early majority are black and white and want to see the numbers. They are about the solution, not sexy technology that makes them look cool. The first challenge for managed video is to deliver substantially more value vs. what customer have today. ‘More value’ here can translate in a couple ways, more from traditional sources (such as security & loss prevention) or more from new value sources (marketing effectiveness driving increased revenue). Both of course need to translate directly to the bottom line. Critically, value must be succinctly and effectively communicated to the customer in terms that resonate.
2. Total customer solutions. Proven 100% easy. The Early Majority customers don’t want to ‘work with you’ they want you to make their lives easier. They need soup to nuts, turn-key solutions that are well thought through and apply to their specific needs (be they industry specific or functional needs). For managed video this translates to presenting solutions that contemplate all elements of the system from install to management and future growth. That provide an easy path to acquire hardware, to scale, administer, and of course a system that is accessible, intuitive, and easy of use and. Further, customers in this next stage typically want proven solutions with references from other customers in the same boat. Anchor customers are important.
3. Understanding & coexistence with existing infrastructure/ecosystem. The Early Majority are aware of existing investment and functionality of existing products. These customers respect the relationships they have with existing vendors and the interconnection of any system with other data & adjacent systems. Its not that these can’t be overcome, they just can’t be ignored if you are going to accelerate adoption. While clearly overcoming switching costs is a part of the story, adjacent systems and data are also a tremendous enabler for Managed Video. The better understood the adjacent systems and data, the better those elements can be integrated with video to drive insight and value. POS systems and data is an obvious example, as video integrated to POS can create exponential insight and value to the customer vs. either alone.

I’m not suggesting this is rocket science or that this list is all inclusive. But these are some of the real challenges that will determine the pace of adoption. Of course I’ve voted with my feet and believe that here at Envysion we are taking these challenges head on and are well positioned to drive acceleration. Of course there is a lot of hard work (and fun!) ahead to make that happen.

I’m interested to hear other perspectives and in the future I’ll circle back with more of the Envysion view on overcoming these hurdles, our progress, as well as the new things that we find along the way!