The IP video surveillance opportunity, part 1: the enterprise

The burgeoning migration of video surveillance systems to IP cracks open a large untapped market for telecom service providers. There are technological and business hurdles to overcome (more on that later). But telecom service providers may be able to expand this opportunity beyond the currently visible market by transforming surveillance into much broader managed video services.

PART ONE: THE LARGE ENTERPRISE

IP video surveillance as a managed service is heating up among large enterprises – especially those with a large number of dispersed locations, like retail chains. Although a chief driver of these services so far has been the cost benefit of eliminating human security guards on site, one service provider sees opportunity far beyond that.

Envysion, a provider of managed IP surveillance services, is looking for telecom service providers to partner with to help it achieve its next level of growth and has spoken with several already about wholesaling or white-labeling its offering.

Since it launched service in 2007, Envysion, led by former telecom execs from Level 3 and ICG Communications, has raised $12.5 million in venture capital funding and, with the help of system integrators, racked up an appetizing list of fast-food restaurant chains as customers (some 150 in all). But long-term, it would make sense for Envysion and other video-as-as-service providers to join forces with telecom carriers, the company said.

In Envysion's system, IP video is stored in firewalled devices at each location and viewed (and intelligently searched) upon request over the Web by various tiers of users – from regional managers to higher-level corporate executives -- so the system must intelligently control that access to that secure video. That's where the telecom service provider comes in.

"You have to be very good at connecting and maintaining connections to hundreds and thousands of these recorders," said Matt Steinfort, Envysion's chief executive officer and a former vice president at Level 3. "Some [users] get access to just one store, some to just five stores. So it's become a network problem."