Last week’s NACStech show in Dallas provided an opportunity to see the latest in technology for convenience stores and petroleum retailers. There were about a half dozen video providers exhibiting at the show, as video is a long-established technology in the convenience store environment. The combination of late-night hours, customers who tend to pay with cash, and a proclivity for single-employee shifts makes these stores targets for crime, and the industry has long relied on video to combat this. Demonstrating our Managed Video service to this crowd was fun — with lots of oohing and ahhing at the ease of use and the ability to look at an unlimited number of stores through a single interface.

The most fun, though, was one of the after-hours networking events, where everybody was standing around with a beer in hand, talking a little bit about their work and a little bit more about their hometown and their kids.  I happened to end up in a group that included a couple of guys from a major oil company with operations in over a hundred countries around the world.  When I introduced myself and said that I was in the video business, one of them said that their company was looking into whether they could find a video system that could be used across their entire enterprise, from refineries to retail outlets to office buildings. Cursing the day that I signed an employment contract that didn’t contain a provision for commissions, I told him that my company offered a Managed Video service that was designed specifically for the purpose of viewing large numbers of geographically dispersed operations like his.

While it’s becoming more and more common to find people who understand the value of Managed Video –  it was really quite a rush to hear that this concept has caught the attention of a global company! And even though the conversation quickly turned back to the merits of living close to one’s grandchildren, I did manage to get a business card for some post-show follow-up.

Access control and video surveillance are two of the many physical security applications that are seeing significant changes in both how they are used by companies and how they are being delivered by service providers.

In both cases, end-users are discovering ways to utilize the services for more than their traditional applications.  In the case of access control, companies are tying their access control systems to other security applications, such as network security, to increase the overall effectiveness of their corporate security programs.  In the case of video surveillance, companies no longer view video as strictly as security application, instead leveraging for operational improvements, training and loss prevention.

From a technology standpoint, the Internet is having a dramatic on how service providers can provide these two services.  Both access control and video surveillance are well suited for a SaaS-based approach.  End-user companies are beginning to understand the network challenges associated with managing a large number of geographically distributed systems and are also embracing the lower total cost of ownership of SaaS services.

Given these similarities, and the fact the target customers are very similar for both services, it is no surprise that access control providers and video providers are both interested in exploring how the other could augment their service to create a compelling joint offering.  While each service has strong appeal on a stand-alone basis, there is reason to believe that a joint offering would create a very compelling solution for customers.

There are several levels of integration that access control and video surveillance companies can pursue.  It is useful to think of the range of options from a customer’s perspective, ranging from least integrated to most integrated:

• Single vendor for purchasing – Two completely separate systems are available from the same service provider.  The only advantage to this model is simplified billing and the ability to work with a single trusted provider.
• Two services that can talk to each other – Two separate systems, but data and information is shared between them.  The advantage is being able to link events in one system to the information in the other.  It works in both directions.  In one case, a user could see all access control events within their video service so that they could search for specific events and view video.  In the other case, a user could manage their access control system and pull up video to verify a prior event or to determine whether to take an action like opening a door.
• One integrated service – Both access control and video surveillance services are driven by the same user interface.  While the underlying technologies and services may be provided by two different service providers, the customer views it as a single application with multiple capabilities.

When you get in a room with a bunch of CIOs and senior IT executives from a single industry you expect to hear a lot about technology, and that was certainly the case with the IT execs that attended the recent Hotel Technology Forum. These folks are the model for what you want from your IT group; they are totally focused on customer needs and customer satisfaction. They define customer needs and customer satisfaction beyond the technology in the guest rooms to include the services that are provided to the staff to ensure that the customers have a great experience at the hotel and walk away with a positive impression of the brand.

Brand is a key driver in this industry — whether it be the great service provided by the Four Seasons or the value to the business traveler provided by an Embassy Suites. What enables consistency across the multiple hotels that make up a hotel chain (brand) are the systems that drive the business and support the company’s culture, and these IT execs truly understand that connection. They are looking for ways to leverage the tools that they are using today to better support operations and drive customer satisfaction. Video, which was once relegated to the area of security, is becoming a powerful tool to drive operations efficiency and, as a result, customer satisfaction. Whether it be for training or sharing best practices or to allow key managers to increase their ability to manage remote sites, video is becoming a more common tool in the hotel operator’s arsenal. The key to realizing this value is to enable the video to be viewed remotely and delivered as a service. With the ability to manage video as a service and allow users to access video over the web and across multiple locations we will be seeing an explosion in the way video will be used in this dynamic industry.

Like video, access control is an area where companies are beginning to approach the market with a SaaS orientation.  Peter Boriskin, vice president of R&D at Tyco wrote about “The Art of Providing Security as a Service” to describe why managed access control represents a great opportunity.

You know you are on to something when the 900 lb gorillas in the market are starting to advocate it.

The various constituents (IT, marketing, operations, finance, etc.) have all bought in and are excited about the new capability. Now you start to think about the implementation and the on-going management and a few questions come quickly to mind:

• How do I get video to and from my remote locations without breaking my network?
• How do I make these capabilities available to a broad and not always technical audience within my company?
• How do I control who has access to what video from what location across our entire company?
• How do I ensure all of the remote equipment is operational all the time?
• How do I avoid locking myself into a technology that will become obsolete in the next 6 months?

The role of Managed Video is to address all of these questions by providing a service –hence the “Managed” part – that handles all of this complexity so that businesses can focus on the benefits they get from video, not on the numerous implementation and management challenges.

There is no debate required on whether companies are utilizing video more frequently and in more diverse applications than ever before. Simply look at the companies that are providing equipment and services in this space, look at the press releases of companies adopting these technologies and look at the investment that is flowing from the venture capital community into companies pursuing these services. The question then becomes, “Why is a Managed Video service required when customers can theoretically implement video throughout their organization on their own by buying all of the components from their local electronics store and managing all of the devices themselves?”