Who’s Ready for Cloud & How to Build RMR

Ahead, experts weigh in on who’s ready for the cloud, which verticals are hesitant to go, and how integrators can leverage cloud architecture to build RMR. Additionally, Cassie Griffin, president and founder, Griffin Security and Technology, Columbus, Miss., shares a story of utilizing cloud-based solutions to meet an end user’s unique needs.

Who’s Going to the Cloud?

There are certain verticals that naturally gravitate towards or away from cloud, but that is changing as the technology advances and becomes more trusted by end users. “In my opinion, I think cloud adoption spans most verticals and most industries in today’s world,” Adam Lowenstein, America’s product director, i-PRO Americas, Houston says. “I think one way you could classify it is by size of deployment. I think what we typically see, which is not the rule, is a smaller camera deployment tends to be more cloud VMS attached. I think part of that is because when you look at total cost of ownership for the solution, when you get into a large-scale system — a sophisticated system, a multi-site system — I won’t say that cloud can’t handle it, but I do think that’s where you start to see more of an argument for an on-prem solution.”

Justin Wilmas, executive vice president, sales, acre security, Plano, Texas agrees that the smaller deployments trend towards cloud. “Small-to-medium business (SMB) instantly go to cloud for a lot of reasons,” he says. “There’s no high upfront cost. It’s super accessible. It’s really easy to use. They can scale up. They can scale down. It’s an OpEx to them versus CapEx.”

Other verticals that are looking at the cloud-first approach include retail, banking and education. Laurent Villeneuve, senior manager, product marketing, Genetec, Montreal, says all three are starting to talk about cloud quite a bit. “We kind of expect for the shift to happen in a high volume, where a lot of schools and banks will migrate to the cloud,” he says. “Retail is a bit more regionally dependent. In some cases, they have so many sites, it would make perfect sense to go to cloud, but maybe there are compliance issues, maybe there’s very limited infrastructure. Bandwidth — in some cases — can put the brakes on that transition to cloud.”

Organizations — like those in the retail vertical — with multi-sites can streamline the management of those sites with cloud-based solutions. “It’s a perfect solution for retail with multiple site footprint across the country,” Mark Barbaric, senior vice president, technology integration, Prosegur Security Integration, Herndon, Va., says. “They want limited involvement in the management of password patches, firmware updates and software updates. Retail doesn’t like to get into that stuff. They’re just not set up for it. Their loss prevention officers just don’t want to deal with it, so they push that to the integrator.”

Barbaric continues, “So we’ve had a couple of pretty large customers — large by footprint, small sites and multiple sites across the country — that were looking for the hybrid model because their locations are remote. Their locations just don’t have the infrastructure requirements for true cloud video.”

And Patrik Pettersson, senior manager, future business and strategic initiatives, Axis Communications, Chelmsford, Mass., adds that hybrid specifically can help larger organizations manage the cost of service. “Larger organizations — as well as mid-sized organizations — have realized that a hybrid approach is the most attractive way to balance your service costs for these types of applications.”

Who’s Hesitant to Go to Cloud?

There are certain highly regulated verticals that are still hesitant on cloud-based solutions and services. Most experts agree that — like the concerns of internet connectivity — this hesitation is aging out of the industry as the internet continues to become as reliable as anything else and more individuals who have grown up alongside it enter the workforce.

As for the industries that remain a bit hesitant, Wilmas lists utilities and critical infrastructure. “They’re highly regulated,” he says. “They have very stringent regulations on how data is shared and how people get access to the systems. But those are also evolving. The next generation of those regulations are evolving and becoming more open to cloud and putting in ways for organizations to adopt cloud, just because it makes sense. Everything’s going that way.”

Villeneuve adds, “Cloud can be more difficult for correctional facilities, armed services and even gaming. For casinos, it’s not the kind of architecture that they’re looking for.”

And from time to time, some just prefer on-prem solutions to anything cloud-based. “It’s rare to find people who just don’t want to adopt, but there’s some out there for sure,” Wilmas says. “There are people that are just used to their super small systems. ‘I’ve always done it this way and I want a server on-site. I don’t want to have to worry about internet connectivity or anything like that. And I would just rather have it under my control.’ And that’s a preference, and that’s fine too — everyone has their preferences.”

What is ‘Private Cloud?’

For those looking for the benefits of the cloud without exposing themselves whatsoever to the public internet, there is a solution known as ‘private cloud’ or ‘closed cloud.’

“There’s what could be called private cloud, which means you’re basically deploying the cloud software in your own environment, maybe in a virtualized instance, but you’re using it internally versus externally,” explains Justin Wilmas of acre Security.

Patrik Pettersson of Axis Communications adds, “You may not open yourself up to cloud as in public cloud, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create WAN connectivity through your environment and have a central data center.”

Wilmas elaborates further, “What that means is you take the cloud solution, like cloud software, and you install it in a virtualized environment. So you take that virtual software and you install it on a server inside of an organization, maybe protected behind a demilitarized zone (DMZ) —a subnetwork buffer to prevent unwanted traffic — protected behind firewalls. Maybe the organization is not accepting cloud, or has security reasons to avoid cloud, and all that typically relates to compliance in highly regulated industries such as energy.

“In a lot of those scenarios, you have to go private cloud,” he explains. “You bring everything in, you protect it behind a firewall, behind a DMZ, and it’s a cloud-based software, but it doesn’t have any outside connections. It’s totally segregated. But then you still have all the benefits of how the cloud software works — it’s all HTML, it’s all browser-based. There’s no software to install on PCs. You do everything through a web browser, all of that type of stuff. And it’s inside your own IT department; your IT department has control over everything.”

Generating Recurring Revenue

Cloud lends itself well to the subscription or recurring revenue model — software-as-a-service (SaaS). Sometimes it can generate fear, Wilmas says. “I think there’s some fear that end users can contract directly with manufacturers for cloud, and it cuts out the integrator,” he explains. “That’s not the case at all. It allows the integrators to get into the recurring revenue business, and that’s super valuable.”

Lowenstein adds, “As the integrator, you can help do the health monitoring; you can help with the firmware updates; you can do some training for the staff. There’s a lot of value in that.”

It provides an ease of service for the end user, as well as the integrator. For example, you can respond to customer concerns remotely. “No matter what size integrator you are, you are really trying to figure out how you’re going to offer managed services,” Pettersson says. “You want to be able to service your customers at your fingertips while you’re out on another job, You don’t want to have to get back to the ‘answering machine’ in order to then call that customer back. You want to have utmost flexibility to log into their system remotely.”

It can lead to certain benefits, like a reduction in truck rolls. “You can remotely troubleshoot before you have to roll a truck,” Wilmas says. “If you have a service maintenance agreement with a customer, the less you roll trucks, the more profitable you become. If you can do more things remotely, the better off you are. So, those are things that are really beneficial and really exciting for integrators. It’s a new technology. It’s something new you have to learn, and you have to change how you think, how you talk, and how you sell.”

Pettersson advises, “It’s important to start questioning your vendors on what tools they are giving you when you commit to be a loyal reseller of their technology. What tools can you get from that partner to manage all these systems that you’ve deployed? You need to look at how that integrates with your ticketing systems. How do you, for instance, start getting a history of when you’ve visited this one customer? You’ve visited this one corner camera five times, so there’s probably something wrong with the camera or there’s something wrong with the cable. How do you start using modern tools that help you identify that you’ve visited this camera before and quite often?”

And, Pettersson believes it’s important to remember that there are third party applications out there that integrate with multiple vendors. “I also think they need to start looking at what systems exist out there that are already integrated with vendors as well,” he says. “There are third party systems and platforms out there that are starting to aggregate multiple vendors. For instance, if you’re not an integrator who’s loyal to one vendor, you’re not going to want five apps because you sell five brands — you’re going to want one aggregated interface that sees all vendors. Start looking around in the industry to see what third-party applications are out there. And I can tell you that some larger integrators are starting to put their own development resources to work to build their own asset management platforms.”

They use this term cloud, and people often look up to the sky, and they think it’s like magic. It kind of feels that way, which is really cool. But at the end of the day, all that data still exists in data centers. And those data centers are all over the world.

Finding the Right Solution

At the end of the day, integrators are tasked with finding exactly the right solution for their customers. Griffin compares the relationship — and the trust between end user and integrator — to that of a doctor and a patient. “Some like a full cloud, some like hybrid, and then there still are some small use cases where I would say there’s local only,” she says. “When our customers — especially our commercial customers — contact us and say they want to be more secure, they’re looking to us for advice almost like a doctor. So when we go with a cloud or hybrid cloud, they know that they can trust that recommendation and that we can explain to them why that monthly fee makes it better for them “We used to be a shop that would sell you a camera system that doesn’t have a monthly subscription, and that was a selling point for people because customers felt like everything wanted a monthly subscription,” Griffin explains. “To have a good quality system without the monthly fee was a selling point for some people.But after a few years of operating the business, I came to realize that I was setting my customers up for a bad experience or to be statistically likely to have a negative experience at some point. Now, we’re of the mindset that yes, it is a monthly fee, but the benefits that you get with that monthly subscription far outweigh the monthly fee for the system.”

This transition to cloud offerings came after working closely with a specific vertical. Griffin was presented with a unique challenge and needed to find a unique solution. “We were searching around for a cloud video solution two years ago because we connected with the vertical of public safety,” she explains. “Our local police department needed something to respond to crime and didn’t really know what to do.

“At the time, they couldn’t hire more officers,” she continues. “They wanted something that would provide eyes around the city. So I had a conversation with one of the leaders of the department, and I asked, ‘We want to help, what can we do?’ They said find me more officers. I’m sorry I can’t do that, but what if we put cameras on utility poles around town? And they asked, ‘Can you do that?’ I told them we could figure it out.”

So Griffin did. “I ended up building a mounted cabinet system that they could mount on their utility poles wherever they wanted throughout the city to be a 24/7 eyes in the sky,” she says. “This helped aid the officers that they did have, and this was a perfect instance of a time that the system was not intuitive enough and not easy enough for an officer or an investigator to use confidently.”

That led Griffin to the simplicity of cloud-based VMS solutions. “We were searching around for something that we could put inside these systems that we built, but that an officer who is not a tech guru — who is not an IT administrator — could quickly pull footage, could quickly send footage to another investigator.”

Griffin currently deals with Eagle Eye Networks’ offerings.

Advice on Selling the Cloud

Amidst the confusion of navigating what end users believe cloud to be, and the many slightly varied definitions of what constitutes a hybrid approach or an on-prem solution, the experts offered these words of advice as guiding lights. “Focus less on cloud itself, because it’s a means to an end,” Villeneuve says. “They’re not looking to buy your cloud. They don’t care about that. They’re looking for better ways of securing their facilities, so start with that. Start with, ‘I can help you safeguard those people better. I can help you protect privacy here. I can help you be much more efficient here. And then I can help you kind of become a profit center instead of a cost center.’”

Villeneuve also stresses that flexibility to decide exactly when to be on-prem and when to go to the cloud can be a great comfort to customers, because “One of the biggest pains is the burden of choice,” he explains. “The customer feels pressure to choose to go all in on one approach — on one architecture — with very little time or assistance to prepare that migration plan, and that's the worst situation for them.”

Finally, Bill Brennan, president, i-PRO Americas, Houston, Texas, advises, “There’s great benefit in the long run in truly understanding what the customer’s needs are. And there’s great benefit in determining what’s the best option for them in terms of a services option as well as a financial option. Because in many cases, there’s a price tag that comes with cloud. People sometimes don’t realize it until they get so far down the road. So we pride ourselves on really trying to educate our team to ask questions. Don’t just tell them they need cloud. What do you really mean? What are they really looking for?”

In case you missed it, here's part one.