If you don’t know me or are new to SD&I magazine, perhaps you don’t know that I’ve taken it as a personal directive to help drive the industry to new technologies—and that means dealers, installers, integrators or IT companies. It’s my mission, because I believe it’s in the best interests of the industry and will make the most business sense for you and help you achieve success.
There are some who are embracing technology wholeheartedly and just last month I wrote about Ackerman Security Systems, a traditional alarm installing and central station company, moving to a paperless sales and installation process—and how it’s helping them achieve growth and vitality in a market that may seem lackluster to some.
This month, I have another success story, and it comes from NAVCO in California. I’ve known the company and Jim Kauker, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing, for quite some time. They are grounded in the systems integration side of the business with a fine focus on security and a good dose of networking skills—and it’s right where they want to be. So I wasn’t surprised when I got a press release from the company on how they are moving to the clouds—in a big way!
NAVCO, based in Anaheim announced a new cloud-based video-on-demand service called VideoMetriXs, for small to medium-sized businesses, according to Kauker. “Instead of marrying video surveillance with traditional monitoring, our goal is to make it as simple as possible for the end user. With this, they can get video-on-demand for as little as $1 per day.” VideoMetriXs also reduces costs by eliminating the need to purchase cameras or other equipment because everything is included in the monthly fee.
Surveillance made simple and operating expense
VideoMetriXs is surveillance made simple for the user, said Kauker, who added that the program is really an evolution or off shoot of a DVR rental program they had in place for their customers some four years ago. “Our goal is to totally simplify this for the user,” he said. “And then it’s moved from being a capital to an operating expense. Right now it’s for the smaller business, a one to four camera system, but we will expand that to the enterprise in the future.” The service includes live and recorded viewing for the monthly fee and is available as a “trigger event” from any Web connection 24/7. The user has to have their own Internet and network connectivity in place.
Kauker said it’s a simple way for users to have video storage elsewhere, and currently IT entities can’t handle all the bandwidth, prerequisites and requirements of video surveillance on site, but that will change in the future as more businesses move their data and video storage to the clouds. NAVCO is also bundling VideoMetriXs with a camera rental program which he said is palatable for the buyer, especially the way CCTV technology is rapidly changing. NAVCO is partnering with EMC, who will host the servers for VideoMetriXs. “Our value proposition is that you get a commercial grade professionally installed system with a rental model and the added security and features of having it all up in a cloud-based recording scenario. You can manage it wherever you are.” VideoMetriXs enables customers to remotely monitor multiple locations anytime from anywhere via a Smartphone, iPad, laptop or other Internet-connected device.
I knew there was more, so I pressed on. Sure enough, the name, VideoMetriXs, is indicative of the way the solution is headed.
“You can visualize what’s going to happen here,” Kauker continued. “Once NAVCO helps store video ff site, we now have the ability, once it’s all in one location, to apply analytics and forensics. Our goal is that we can rent analytics and apply it to the video. We can build a video site where users can go view video and apply whatever kind of analytics they need.”
The other interesting part of the service is that it launched as a totally Web-based purchasing and marketing plan. Users can request and purchase the service online and a project manager follows up to schedule the installation. If the customer needs additional help they can immediately schedule a site visit by the NAVCO project managers.
“There’s a whole new generation of users who are comfortable with the Web,” Kauker said. The Web, clouds, forensics, analytics…get your share now.
