'Best In Show' Fails

Related, periodically people ask about IPVM doing awards. On the one hand, we could obviously do much better identifying real innovations. On the other, as is our concern generally, we worry about the misuse of our analysis as promotion or marketing for companies. I am not sure what we would do. If anyone has thoughts on this, feel free to share.

Disclaimer: I am VP Engineering for IPConfigure

I think, respectfully, that John's post misunderstands the meaning -- or at least *a* meaning -- of "Best New Product". There is a semantic game at work here: is "Best New Product" the best product that was released in the past year, or the best product that's first to occupy a brand new market position? In my view and in the view of the SIA judges, this award addresses the former.

The best product in a class is rarely the first. Good work takes time, both in terms of product development and understanding customers' needs in a new or changing market space. IPConfigure Orchid Fusion VMS on ACAP for Axis cameras is a new product that offers a no-compromise embedded, web-based VMS with first-class user experiences and capabilities that are fundamentally identical to Orchid Fusion VMS running on traditional servers -- and in fact the two can integrate seamlessly in a way that's transparent to end-users and system administrators.

While intelligent and well-meaning folks can disagree on the degree to which this architecture is revolutionary, IPConfigure feels that our product represents the cleanest, most technologically sound, and highest value implementation of the concept and has likewise earned the judges' decision.

Because users rarely run VMSes inside of their cameras (<0.1%), many are unaware of how common this option is, but running a VMS inside of a camera has been available for many years...

Agreed.  Isn’t every camera that has an SD card technically a VMS, even if only a rudimentary one?

I am a marketing guy. I am not a sales guy. I am not an engineer. Some of you can stop reading now.

Because John Honovich has such a significant following in the industry which my employer serves, I try to understand the underlying (or overarching) principles of his arguments. Why? By representing a manufacturer, I have a responsibility to try to understand what our potential customers think, or are being influenced to think.

As I understand it, John is not taking issue with running a VMS on the camera. John is taking an issue with the criteria used to choose winners of awards, specifically a "best of show" award at a security products convention.

To me, to understand this you must accept that John's purpose with IPVM is to educate and PROTECT integrators. 

When he states that the market for security cameras running the VMS on the camera is small, I think that he is telling us that he questions why such a niche product would be deemed significant. It could be the universally best VMS running on the universally best camera and he would still say that few people are going to need it or buy it. So, why should it win an award?

We sell a very, very good VMS and it is now available on very, very good cameras as "edge" offerings. That is why this issue is important to me.

John's argument acutely illustrates my challenge -- what is the use case for these cameras? Are there uses that integrators (and apparently, even John) are not recognizing, or is the application always going to be limited?

But to have a product named "best in show" where there is an old and ongoing argument about the usefulness of the product does not make much sense to me, either. But, congratulations. You won. If your win increases the market for the cameras running your VMS, it should influence our sales as well.

As several here have pointed out, it may just be that some of us disagree with the criteria for the award.

If the award was, as has been alluded to, "The Best New Product with the Most Potential to Make Integrators More Profitable," it might be easier to understand and to debate the winner.

As a marketing guy for a manufacturer, I never want to be accused of doing marketing for marketing's sake. Our engineers should not do engineering for engineering's sake. Innovation should not be innovative for innovation's sake.

Marketing and innovation for the customer's sake.

By choosing products for awards that solve niche issues, is the customer ultimately being served? Is the customer even considered in the criteria?

I’ll stand up for sales people here, since I am one.  

Depending on the size of the organization they can or do provide so much sales support that most of their sales team can only call someone to show you how to make it work. Is that their fault? Partially. 

Some provide no support beyond a bunch of glossy literature, power points created by product managers and mar-com who have never seen the product in the wild.  There you have good sales people passing bad info and not knowing.

Several provide the ability for a sales person to either sink or swim with so little support by team members or internal product resources. The swimmers usually know the product inside and out, but get trapped with after sale support calls.

On the sales person side, I’ve seen the people who won’t use external resources because they either lack the ability to manage them, schedule, communicate, or they just find doing themselves easier.

Then, there are the worst offenders.  They take bits and pieces of solutions as a total solution and just make it up on the go.  When caught, they move to another company claiming the last one didn’t really fit or their technology didn’t work as described.

In several instances I have been asked “BS Detection” questions geared to encourage me to make it up on the fly or just plain lie.  I’ve been told when others failed miserably after providing the correct answer, which can include “I have no idea”

Okay....done venting.