There’s a lot of talk about the cloud, both in the security industry and in general. In security, that discussion is almost always about cloud-based video, which goes by many names — managed video, hosted video and remote video, to name a few. Whatever the name, the concept allows dealers and integrators to provide video as a service (VaaS) to their customers — thus turning what in the past might have been a set-it-and-forget-it (unless something went wrong) relationship into recurring revenue.
A lot has changed in the VaaS space over the last few years. Among those changes has been an increased awareness and acceptance of cloud-based services in general. Microsoft’s “To the Cloud” commercials certainly helped that along. In security, cloud-based video offers customers a few benefits, not the least of which is a low cost of entry. In most cases, customers pay nothing up front and instead have those costs rolled into their monthly service charge. It’s not unlike cell phone or even alarm monitoring contracts.