Less than 24-hours after warning Wall Street about a revenue slowdown, Cisco Systems flexed its financial muscle. The company is investing $100 million to help VARs and managed service providers more effectively target small businesses with 100 or few employees.
You’ll find complete details on our sister site, TheVARguy.com. But stay here for a moment and consider this: Backed by Cisco, there’s an emerging MSP opportunity that combines video surveillance, storage and WiFi.
We’ve had video surveillance on our managed services hype cycle — which identifies emerging maket opportunities.
We think video surveillance is a huge opportunity for MSPs that can remotely manage pan/tit/zoom WiFi cameras, video feeds, video storage and retrieval, etc.
Cisco’s first small business products (video surveillance, storage and WiFi) are slated to ship later this year.
Plus: There’s an opportunity to combine video surveillance with physical building/facility security.
Or are we misreading the market? I’m all ears.
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Tags: Cisco Systems Small Business Push | managed storage | Managed WiFi | Video Surveillance
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how is managed video surveillance different than managed video as a service / MVaaS?
Hi Joe,
While I believe video surveillance as a SAAS is a growth opportunity, I am skeptical about the ability of MSPs to execute a successful strategy using Cisco components. There are at least 6 – 10 specialist companies already optimizing video surveillance SaaS solutions – lowering overall solution costs and building customized features to overcome some of the barriers of the network load of video. I don’t think Cisco small business products will be competitive against these specialist offerings.
You may be interested in reading my analysis of the managed video surveillance market: http://ipvideomarket.info/report/managed_video_mvaas_video_surveillance
Cheers,
John
John: Thanks for sharing the link with our readers. I respect your perspective but I’ve also learned to never underestimate Cisco.
Dan: We’ve blogged a bit about Managed Video as a Service. I think the difference is MVaaS typically has a back-end video surveillance application tied to it. I think — but could be wrong — Cisco is providing the building blocks for video surveillance but I’m not sure if they actually provide the software-driven video surveillance application that allows you to quickly retrieve and pinpoint specific time events in video.
Again, I’m no expert… merely an observer. I’m sure Cisco and MVaaS solution providers would offer different perspectives than mine.
Hi Joe,
Cisco offers a complete video surveillance solution. Readers can find more information at: http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/ps/index.html
However, Cisco’s current offering is optimized for large-scale live video operations not managed video. I understand the respect for Cisco but Cisco has been in the video surveillance market for 2 years and made very little progress in developing competitive video surveillance offerings. Their most significant announcement was for embedding a DVR in their ISR routers (see http://ipvideomarket.info/review/show/128) which does not support managed video nor was it strong for traditional video surveillance use.
John Honovich: I hope you’ll continue to visit MSPmentor and weigh in with perspectives on MVaaS. I’m not saying that we will always agree with your perspectives, but it’s good to have multiple voices offering their expertise.
Best
-jp
Surveilance is an easy sale to a lot of SMBs. Think about it? the majority of SMB companies will go with what ever their MSP tells them to do, if you have a good wrap with them.
This is a great bundling offering, and they will love you for it. And if you can push cisco on em… DO IT!
MSP Monstor: I know video surveillance is a big opportunity for MSP. But from your perspective, will MSPs face challenges (business, technical, legal) as they attempt to store and sometimes dispose of those video images?
Dan Caruso: I may be able to offer some perspective from a company who provides both the hosted and managed surveillance services. Although the market is defining Managed Video as a Service (MVaaS) as a “hosted” environment with off-site storage of video with web-based streaming video and archive retrieval, that is not exactly how our company defines MVaaS. Our MVaaS offering is actually managed services for IP video surveillance systems where the storage is provided by the customer no matter where it is located. We “manage” their system remotely by providing the initial software, software updates & upgrades, OS updates, system health checks & monitoring, notifications as well as on-going support built in to one monthly fee. It ultimately takes the responsibility of maintaining an on-premise system away from the consumer and puts it is the hands of a service provider like smaller IT companies and VARs.
This is the solution our VAR partners are eager to resell to their customer-base due to its natural fit with their existing managed service offerings. This is most likely the market Cisco is trying to capture, but I can tell them that this is not a new concept.
Our VAR partners are adding PoE-enabled IP cameras on to existing or newly installed enterprise Cisco PoE networks which are also running the client’s Cisco phone system, etc. The VAR manages the network, servers, workstations, phone system and now the surveillance system.
MVaaS in our world is managed video surveillance. The MVaaS being coined as an industry term is what we call our Hosted Video as a Service or HVaaS. So I guess the simplest explanation of the differences between “hosted” and “managed” video surveillance is where the storage is located and Cisco is looking at the latter so VARs can add the surveillance hardware and software in to their managed services offerings which will increase their monthly recurring revenue. I don’t believe it has anything to do with SaaS, but I could be wrong.
byRemote: Please feel free to share your company URL so that readers can get more info in the future. We welcome links on this site as long as they provide more info for our readers instead of shamelessly hyping a specific product.
Thanks again for reading/visiting MSPmentor.
Hi Joe, thank you for the invitation to post our link. Our site may be found at http://www.byremote.net. We too are watching what Cisco may be planning since we have seen them hit our site by doing a search on Google for “hosted video surveillance”. I am not sure if they are looking in to an SaaS platform or if they are going the managed services route. In either case, it should be interesting.
byRemote: Please keep us posted re: your perspectives. We strive to make sure all visitors can have a voice on this site.
The market is growing and we are seeing a larger demand for our hosted surveillance video platform as well. We released Secure-i Hosted Video Recorder (HVR) last month which requires nothing more than the camera and a broadband connection client side.
I have to agree with John that Cisco will be competing with 6-10 specialist companies that have been optimizing video for SaaS, not sure Cisco can compete with current price points. Joe makes a good point though, you should never underestimate Cisco, they always find a way.
At the end of the day, there is a need for hosted surveillance and there are companies like Secure-i Inc. and byRemote out there doing it very well.
byRemote, we are also monitoring Cisco, we’ve seen an increase of traffic from them on various key phrases over the past month’s, it will be interesting to see where this all heads.
Cheers,
Andres
Have you seen the latest Gartner report about Cisco WAAS?
Cisco WAAS Review: Nope, we haven’t read the report. We respect Gartner but we don’t subscribe to their services. Are you a Cisco employee? Gartner employee? Why did you mention the report? Do I sense a magic quadrant pitch coming?