MySpace’s “Data Availability” Project might make for an interesting model to approach processing data captured from today’s business systems.

Granted, social apps are ALL about sharing with only minimal consideration for control and privacy of data. However, imagine if there were de-facto standard ways of handling managed video. Software providers, service providers and manufacturers could much more easily work together. I suspect it would be useful and valuable if the following product and service providers could connect to each others services over the Internet:

• Video monitoring service providers
• Media storage service providers
• Mediaserver/camera configuration services
• Video camera equipment
• Access control providers
• Fire alarm providers
• First responders (lawful intercept/access to private media system)
• Installation/field services
• Network security services

I’m sure there are many others.

No, I’m not talking about genetic engineering.   I’m talking about whether a company can change the very core elements of how it both views and approaches its business and the world around it.

A company’s DNA is a complex result of the people that work there, the values and beliefs that they share, the practices and processes that they put in place, and the language that they use to communicate what they hold to be most important. 

Culture is probably another word that could be used to describe a lot of this, but I like DNA better because it gets to the heart of an issue that is relevant both to my firm and to a number of others in the physical security world.

Now that I’ve explained what I mean by DNA, I’ll repeat my question: Can you change your DNA?

I have now employed several measurement techniques to answer our question.  But I am surely missing something important.  Isn’t there a more appropriate measurement of enterprise size than those presented?

Of course there is, and it is called market capitalization (Salute to Dan Caruso for answering correctly in the comments section).  Calculated as the share price times the number of shares outstanding, market capitalization is the measure of economic value that is placed on an enterprise by investors.

Now that this settled, care to guess who has a larger market capitalization, GM or Salesforce.com. . .

Yesterday I linked to two recent earnings releases, and asked the question – Who’s bigger?

If you answered “it depends”, you were correct.  It is not possible to answer this question without knowing the basis of comparison.

Should the size of an enterprise be based on reveneues?  How about profits?  Total assets?  Number of employees?  

In the first quarter of 2008, GM recorded $42.7 billion (with a “b”) in revenues.  Salesforce.com recognized only $248 million in their first quarter.  GM has 266,000 employees worldwide.  Salesforce.com is still under 3,000.  GM has nearly $149 billion in total assets.  Salesforce, on the other hand, has only $1.1 billion.*

GM is clearly the larger company, right?

But what about profitability?  GM has been posting recent losses, including a $3.3 billion first quarter loss.  Salesforce.com posted $18.4 million in income in their first quarter.*

So, Salesforce.com is the winner, right?

But haven’t I missed another important measure?

* Data sourced from either the earnings releases or annual SEC filings.

On May 21, 2008, Saleforce.com released its fiscal first quarter results.  A link to the news release is attached.

http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2008/05/080521.jsp

About three weeks prior, General Motors released its first quarter results.

http://www.gm.com/corporate/investor_information/earnings/index.jsp

Stating the obvious, these are two very different companies.  Salesforce.com develops and markets on demand application services, which includes Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service solutions.  General Motors, on the other hand, develops, produces and markets cars, trucks and parts worldwide. 

About the only thing they have in common is that they were founded or came to prominance at the turn of ”a” century. 

Ever thought about which company is bigger?

If your video system isn’t linked to “real” information, it is providing only a mere fraction of the value it could be.

The future of video surveillance lies in how to manage all the data being collected and turn it into something useful. Our ability to collect ever more massive amounts of data is growing at a rapid pace. Video management systems are part of the reason we can more easily collect such data.

However, most surveillance video is not extremely valuable until it is accompanied by some kind of information that makes that video searchable. In fact, without information to give context to the video, it is not valuable at all. That information might come from a person sitting in front of a video who knows something about what is going on or it might come from a door access control system or a point of sale system. Given the sea of video out there, one must have some help from automated data systems.
This is the premise of Steve Hunt’s PSIM acronym which he talks about at his Security Dreamer blog.

I think Steve would agree that the value of turning video data into “information” goes well beyond Physical Security and is especially pertinent to the broader category of business intelligence. When it comes to business applications, Steve points out that security is really not the point; rather the ability to improve one’s business is a huge factor driving growth in video.

There is no more clear evidence that video is gravitating toward a managed service model than the fact that the telecom folks are beginning to talk about it in earnest.

Check out the following two blogs that have recently had a post specifically on video as a managed service

Ike Elliot’s Telecosm Blog – “Interview with Envysion” - this is a great blog on the inner workings of telecom from a long time industry insider.  Ike is a very talented guy that can go crazy deep on the technology, but also has a good business sense and can see how everything fits together.

MSP Mentor – “The Next Big Managed Service: Video Surveillance” - another good blog on the managed service provider ecosystem.  Joe Panettieri has a great insiders perspective on the world of managed service providers and is ahead of the curve in terms of what is going to be important for that category now and in the future.

One of the most obvious players in the MVaaS ecosystem is the broadband service provider.  In order to provide remote access to video, you need at least a modest amount of bandwidth.

The benefits to the broadband service provider are clear.  Having a powerful value added broadband application riding on the network is a good thing.  If it works well and doesn’t bring down the network, it can be a great mechanism to drive increased bandwidth requirements (if they use it they will want bigger pipes to improve the quality of the video they are able to stream).  And finally, for those broadband service providers with a forward looking vision, MVaaS also represents a potential service extension for them in the same way that they are beginning to provide VoIP today.

I’ll write more on this in a later posts, but check out the article on InGrid partnering with a regional cable company as just one small piece of evidence of the opportunity.

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.

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.