The person they hired away from SAP was recruited to product manage, i.e. make sure the lifecycle of applications that already exist is managed properly and that other opportunities to leverage the technology are thoroughly investigated, including what the competition might be doing, and that the most promising ones get developed and make it into the portfolio.
Any data attributes related to video information - not necessarily the footage itself - like time, space, objects, movement, speed, direction, thermal carateristics, color, shape and textures can potentially be captured and manipulated in order to provide information about events and assist in managing them.
Retail is one of the most obvious applications, which is why I guess I just sort of jumped on it - aided by the fact that you mentionned in your original post - but there are many others I can think of off the top of my head.
Road and other types of traffic management, crowd assessment, manufacturing process control, materials movement, access control come to mind, but basically anything that would typically involve something you can see in action and need to assess can also be a candidate.
And you're welcome for the API...and the product management explanation, since they weren't only for your benefit. ;)
Avigilon is a growing business and you would expect they would take whatever measures are needed to make sure that growth is maximized and managed properly and I'd be disappointed if they didn't. Hiring somoene from the outside should help take that load off other VideoIQ personnel whose strengths are in actual product and application development.