In a recent post I suggested that managed video as a service would see some major customer wins in 2010 that would further validate the appeal and impact of this model.  Clearly I have an inside track on that type of prediction so wasn’t going too far out on a limb as is evidenced by our announcement today of Einstein Noah Restaurant Group’s selection of Envysion for an immediate enterprise rollout to all of their 425 corporate locations.

This is significant for a number of reasons:

First, a leading national restaurant brand decided to invest in our service during the worst economic climate that any of us have ever experienced, one that has hit restaurants and retailers particularly hard.  Without violating any NDAs, I can tell you that they made this decision because they think it will be very good for them financially.  This would not have happened if we were just pitching the traditional video surveillance value proposition with a different architecture and business model – it happened because we were able to demonstrate to them the value that they could bring to their business by utilizing our service.  If it were just a matter of putting in cameras you would see more customers doing just that, regardless of the recent recession.

Second, it is significant as it is another strong endorsement of the impact that businesses can have when they put video in the hands of more than just their security or loss prevention teams.  Einstein’s, like many multi-unit operators, has a very good central LP/Audit team but it is the 100s of people in the rest of the organization that become the force multiplier when armed with the additional insights that we are able to provide.  Many traditional video providers will claim that they CAN be used by other people in the organization – we are demonstrating that 100s and 1000s of other people ARE using the service to drive value, which is a big difference.

Finally, and this is a topic being kicked about on the blogs these days, this win is significant in that it involved absolutely zero contribution from anyone in the traditional video security or systems integrator worlds.  We are an innovative internet startup that is leading the charge in the development of the managed video as a service market – we don’t come from video or security we come from telecom.  We worked directly with a forward thinking customer to understand their requirements and help them implement a service that drives material value for them that happens to use video cameras.  We are managing the entire implementation working with a good partner of ours that does traditional telecom installation services.  Hundreds of recorders and thousands of cameras implemented in a single project and nobody but us and the customer.

Not a bad start to the year I’d say.