Calling all MVaaS, VSaaS and hosted video providers, customers and end users, channel and solution partners – Save the date.

3^rd Annual MVaaS Summit – Unleash Video
October 7-9, 2012
Boulder, CO

This year the summit will focus on how we all can unleash the power of video based business intelligence in the market, the channel, and across all potential customer segments.  Managed and hosted models open up new video capabilities and never before thought of use cases.  Video is no longer constrained to a limited value proposition with just a few users, we now have an opportunity to unleash video and deliver a tool to customers that improves decision making and drives profit improvement.  The unfiltered visibility video provides gives an understanding of what actually is happening at the site level – solving the age old challenge of ensuring proper execution and giving an understand of the real life story behind the numbers.  Please join us and help accelerate and shape this transformation!

I’ll have more info about registration in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we are accepting speaker proposals for engaging presentations, use cases, breakout sessions or panels. Please send your ideas over and lets talk.  We do also have a few limited sponsorship opportunities available. If you’re interested in sponsoring, send an email to Hayley.

Looking forward to seeing you this fall.

The channel was a hot topic at the MVaaS summit a couple weeks back (summary blog here) – there are many open questions when it comes to managed and hosted solutions and their path to market.  For starters, managed and hosted solutions present a different value proposition as well as a different technology and operational delivery model vs. legacy video surveillance.  So if you are selling a different story and different set up to a potentially to different set of buyers can it begs the question, should you use the legacy channel model? 

At the summit we heard a variety of answers.  The more security centric players advocated leveraging legacy security channels and players that had broader value props (reaching out to loss prevention, operations, marketing etc.) the feedback was that today’s channel options likely would not suffice or at minimum would need to evolve to deliver successfully.  Here at Envysion we recognize how different our solution is (both value prop as well as technology itself) vs. what the traditional channel has sold.  Because of this, the majority of our sales are direct.  We are certainly open to engaging with channel partners but predominantly in a referral type arrangement vs. resale which has had limited success to date. 

Over the last weeks we’ve had a number of interesting conversations with channel players.  The conversations generally take one of two paths.  The first path is the channel partner that recognizes that the solution we bring to market is different.  In many cases they will say something to the effect of ‘we know the market is changing and that we will need to change with it’.  The second set of conversations is just the opposite.  They involve someone berating me (or a colleague).   Below are a couple examples

1. “You just don’t get how this works.  We own these guys and you have to go through us.  Do you not understand?  This is how we do it in Retail”
2. “We understand that you have a solution they need but…it has to go through us.  Why are you messing with this?”   

In both of these examples Envysion directly engaged an end customer who ended up selecting our solution – the conversations above were ex post with their current channel provider who was upset about losing the business.  You see in their view it was an entitlement…the conversations felt a bit like ones I’ve seen on the Sopranos if you know what I mean. 

Of course disruption and introducing different selling and solution models can rub people the wrong way.  But at the end of the day it is about value delivered to the end customer and/or through the chain that will determine what channel models are successful and can sustain.  At Envysion we welcome the opportunity to work with channel partners who are willing and able to think and act differently.  To go faster and achieve our ambitious goals and reach more end customers we would benefit from working with partners.  But that said a partnership needs both partners to deliver and have economics commensurate with value created.  

Now that the dust has settled and we are back to our regular routines, I thought this would be a great opportunity to reflect on the 2011 MVaaS Summit.  75+ participants from across the country came to Boulder Colorado for the event and our team and the sponsors put in a lot of time and energy and the payoff was a strong couple days getting issues on the table and enabling connections.  Both days were well-attended and included some impressive speakers and panel participants.  Speakers included Jason Mendelson, Managing Director at Foundry Group and William Rhoades, Research Analyst at IMS research with panelists from a solid set of MVaaS and hosted providers as well as ecosystem players. 

Over the two days we surfaced many opportunities and issues but I’ll provide a top four:  disruptive value delivered by MVaaS & Hosted, channels, nomenclature, and partnering opportunities.  I’ll provide some context here and then follow with additional posts that deep dive.

1. Disruptive value.  Its clear from the market, the case studies we reviewed, and the customer panel that MVaaS and Hosted solutions can do more than deliver an improved TCO vs. traditional solutions.  Key is value delivered beyond traditional security and in marketing, loss prevention, risk, operations.  It changes the game and we are just at the beginning of what is possible. 
2. Channels.  Really interesting discussion as we exmained challenges and successes in going through integrators, central station & security services providers, and telco channels.  There was no consensus and it is clear that we are still early days.  My own observation is that if you believe #1 above then changes to the ‘legacy’ channel model are required.  Change can be tough to make happen and of course can frustrate the establishment. 
3. Nomenclature.  Post summit we relected on this back at Envysion and we firmly believe that the providers in the space need to more firmly declare how the space should be defined.  We heard some perpsectives at the summit that may confuse.  As an example managed/hosted definitions based purely on where video is stored.  I don’t see benefit of defining our space this way.  Given our focus on MVaaS, at Envysion we have a strong POV here and Matt our CEO is planning to post on this shortly so I won’t steal any thunder.
4. Partnering.  Lots of good partnership examples and dialogue.  Reflects a maturing space and acknowledgement by ecosystem of the market opportunity at hand.  Lots of interesting partnering models including service providers leveraging managed video for monitoring and loss prevention services.  As you might expect there were hardware and managed providers as well - specifically we heard from and about EMC & Axis AVHS and Sony & Envysion.  It was good to see this emerging partnerships and to see many potential partners attending.

I got lots of feedback from attendees and we’ve dug through the follow-on survey as well.  Of course the most important starting point is ipnut and survey responses that the event was worth people’s valuable time.  Unanimously yes.  The case study format, channel deep dive and exhibit opportunity for sponsors was very well recieved.  Looking forward to next year I heard a number of suggestions that will enable us to build on what we have developed.  First, we need to balance the size of the show and speakers with dialogue from the attendees – specifically we’ll look to do some breakouts and engage in audience Q&A earlier in the panel discussions.  Secondly, we’ll continue to work on getting a greater diversity of panelists and participants.  

I want to extend a big “thank you” to all attendees. I hope you share the same excitement I feel about the opportunities ahead and the impact we can make together in the MVaaS space. I look forward to seeing everyone at the 2012 MVaaS Summit and together making it even better.  Please nominate the speakers you’d like to see and reach out to me with your ideas and comments.  Lets make this industry event a source of energy to feed our growth and accelerate the momentum that is already building. 

Over the next few weeks, I’ve invited Mike Knievel, Executive Vice President at King Rogers Group Analytics (KRGA) to share his loss prevention insight in a series of guest blogs. As an Insight Marketplace partner, the KRGA team brings decades of experience in security management with retail organizations, corporations, government agencies and law enforcement to Envysion’s award-winning managed video solution. By leveraging Envysion’s MVaaS, KRGA’s team is able to quickly identify, review and resolve potentially fraudulent employee activity for Envysion customers. Through use of Envysion’s video integrated exception reports KRGA’s veteran staff can also investigate trends and behavior patterns and pinpoint operations and training improvements needs at our customer’s locations

Envysion: Why did you decide to partner with Envysion?

Mike Knievel: Envysion products and services are unparalleled in the market.

Their exception reporting is flexible, customizable and presents meaningful information. Furthermore, by integrating video with POS data, Envysion’s system transforms information into knowledge, resulting in better decision-making. All this information is quickly and securely shared among users of the system from anywhere in the world with Internet access.

E: What captured your attention with the Envysion platform?

MK: The first item that stood out was how easy the system was to use. The navigation, the reporting—the entire solution was so user-friendly and intuitive. The second thing was the flexibility of the Envysion solution. Envysion’s fully-customizable exception reporting from the POS system enables us to extract and present data in ways specific to our needs.

It only took one quick query to reveal how stores compare to one another in one exception area. Then one simple click later, we could see how cashiers compared to each other within a particular store. We select which cashiers we want to review and click on a particular transaction and Envysion’s system takes us directly to the corresponding point in the video. It’s amazing how powerful the system is, especially when it’s so easy to use.

E: Besides loss prevention, in what other areas does the Envysion solution excel?      

MK: Typically, POS audits are used to identify theft. However, they are also great for finding human errors that can result in losses far exceeding theft issues, such as when an item is first set up (incorrectly) in the system. An exception report will reveal the problem and the video component will show that nothing malicious is happening. This is a signal to dig deeper to uncover the problem (an item is keyed in improperly).

Consider a sale item that is improperly set up for a 1,000 store chain. Each store sells an average of 10 units = 10,000 units. If the error is entered into the system as $5.00 too low, this results in a 10,000 x $5.00 = $50,000 profit loss. That’s a lot of money lost from one typo! 

The Envysion system can also help determine if a cashier has been improperly trained. We may find a recurring, improperly applied discount that shows up on an exception report, and the video reveals who is consistently applying the discount incorrectly. Once the cashier is identified, the training issue can be corrected and the cashier can apply the discount properly.  

As many of you may know the Managed & Hosted Video Summit is coming up shortly (June 6-7 in Boulder).  Its our key event in the MVaaS and hosted space so if you haven’t yet pulled the trigger, I’d encourage you to do so.   Sony, Envysion, Axis and Bright Hat are sponsoring and we’ve got a great line up of speakers, panels, and attendees including IMS research to speak to growth in the space and Jason Mendelson from Foundry kicking things off with our keynote on innovation.  And did I mention its in beautiful downtown Boulder at the St Julien?  Doesn’t get much better than that.

Also thought I’d put up a couple links from other recent blogs highlighting MVaaS.  Here MVaas is named as one of nine awesome products at ISC West.   And here  is a write up on MVaaS in Business Phone News.

Exciting times for MVaaS over the last couple months.  Not only are we seeing great customer traction and wins overall but specifically exciting to see a number of wins across some new segments (recent Envysion Announcement on Cinemark) like cinema.  While it is likely intuitive to some that video based business intelligence fits for just about every operator it is still exciting to see completely new segments realize the potential of putting a transformational video tool into the hands of employees across the enterprise.

For cinema, much like for retail, restaurant, and c-store customer segments, the story is about leveraging MVaaS as a productivity tool that can easily and rapidly tranlate video based business intelligence to profit impact.  Within a cinema environment opertors can get unfiltered visibility to concessions, ticket transactions, line times, and key entry/exit points.  Marketers can get visibility to customers, promotional materials, discount transactions etc.  For our announced cinema customer the bottom line impact was both measurable and significant. 

We look forward to the coming weeks as we see more segments embrace MVaaS solutions.  And also to the Managed & Hosted Video Summit which will provide a great forum for both providers, customers, and partners to describe how managed and hosted solutions across the ecosystem are making bottom line impact and transforming the video surveillance space.

A week or so back I posted some reflections on 2010, so wanted to circle back and switch over to 2011.  I’m not big on making specific predictions, I’ll leave that to the analysts.  But I am interested in discussing what I see as the key levers that will translate to adoption rates.  Here are my top 3 key areas as well as some x factors to keep an eye on and will determine if 2011 is a so called ‘break-out’ year.

1.  Demonstrated differentiated value.  Differentiated is the key.  Its got to quantified, bottom line impacting value that catches your eye.   It should be a number that would cause c-level and board members to say ‘why are we not doing this’.

2.  Big names.  We need to continue to add to the list of big names who have shifted to managed and hosted video.  The examples should be a mix of industry ‘thought leaders’ and others who are just big and aren’t known to dive into ‘new’ early.  To move over into the ‘early majority’ stage of things you need to have lined up the early adopters. 

3. ‘Standardized’ solutions.  This is not to say commodity and not to say that there is not customization that occurs for customers.  It is to say that for early majority type customers to adopt they need to see a solution that is repeatable and predictable.  Early majority customers don’t want to ‘figure it out’ with you.

X Factors.  My X factors are the economy, investment and the ecosystem.  Economy is self-explanatory.  Investment similarly.  By ecosystem here I am referencing solution partnering.  Will players in adjacent spaces be able to create combined solutions that are compelling and bring them to market.  Seemingly there are many if you look across hardware, software, services providers.  The added leverage here could make for some significant adoption traction.

Where do you think MVaaS or related areas such as hosted and VSaaS are headed in 2011?

There is evidence of increasing strength in the retail sector. Holiday retail sales were up 5.5% in 2010. The flip-side of the coin is, to date, we have experienced a jobless recovery.

If unemployment remains high, it will be interesting to see how we evolve on a societal level. Will there become a greater rift in class separation? Will those who have jobs not be as afraid of being laid off and spend more money (as we just saw during the holidays) while those who are part of the long term unemployed remain unemployed and continue to struggle? Not a pretty picture but potentially a reality for at least the near future.

Two implications of this scenario for retailers are:

1. As the economy grows and sales grow, so does the absolute dollar value of savings attributable to MVaaS. Envysion provides its customers a savings of 1% of revenue.
2. If unemployment remains at recession levels, the likelihood of shrinkage increases. A MVaaS solution is important to combat this higher pressure.

It will be intriguing to observe how retailers respond to the circumstances of this recovery. Which will have the foresight to proactively adapt and which will be caught in a reactive mode?

Hard to believe that 2010 is over.  It has been a fun ride and I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to reflect on what ground we’ve covered and then pick up with a second post on where we might head in 2011.   

From an MVaaS perspective I’d suggest that as an industry we made good progress but 2010 was not yet the ‘break out’ year.  As an industry I would suspect those in the MVaaS space would likely say 2010 was very good, but not great.  Looking at the innovation adoption cycle it would seem that managed video may be now hitting some of the early majority given the commercial successes reported but the pace of adoption through the early majority is currently moderate.  Part of this definitely is driven by the fact that targeted customers continue to fight through continued economic headwinds.  The good news, from my view, is that we stand to benefit in 2011 and beyond from the foundational components built in 2010.  But at the end of the day I’d be disappointed if we didn’t increase the pace of adoption next year.

So what was noteworthy in 2011?

1.  Commercial traction both with large enterprises as well as SMB.  We saw many announced customers across the space inclusive of influential ‘flagship’ brands.  Here at Envysion they included key wins in the retail, entertainment, c-store, and services space.   I saw many SMB and enterprise wins announced by competitors as well.

2.  The industry and ecosystem is starting to coalesce.  The inaugural Managed and Hosted Summit occurred this past summer and is now a planned annual event.  Ecosystem players are starting to reach out to build partnerships…though I’d suggest this remains at an early stage.  There are many adjacent solution areas that make for logical partnerships, I would expect by end of 2011 some meaningful ones to form.  Outside of solution partners, the indirect channel picture remains cloudy, in particular the question of how, or if, the hosted & managed solutions fit with the legacy integrator channel remains open.

3.  Investment continues.  We have seen a number of announced VC investments with some large numbers.  3VR’s recent round I’m sure caught many folks’ attention. 

4.  Growing mindshare across the security and video surveillance industry.   It is clear that the large incumbents are starting to take notice.  I’d suggest this is a reflection of the commercial successes MVaaS has achieved – though on a relative basis the market remains modest so it affords the incumbents time.

Of course at the end of the day the ultimate measure of success in any industry/company is measured by the numbers and I will be interested to see how 2010 reports.   As for 2011, while I won’t be doing the classic ‘predictions’ blog I will follow up this one with some thoughts on leading indicators and pov on if 2011 will turn out to be the ‘breakout year’.

We are starting to gear up for our 2011 Managed & Hosted Video Summit! Registration is now officially open and we are also talking to potential sponsors.  We had lots of positive feedback on the event last year and we expect this year to take it up to the next level.  The Summit is in Boulder Colorado on June 6-7 at the St. Julien.  For your convenience you can use a credit card for your registration this year (yes, welcome to the modern world). 

Hit the web-site to register and please contact me if you are interested in sponsorship.