Eagle Eye Exec On Mountain Of Servers - VSaaS Growth Analysis

Published Apr 25, 2017 04:00 AM

Eagle Eye VP of Operations, Hans Kahler [link no longer available], posted a picture of himself sitting on top of a shipment of new servers, as a testament to the companies growth.

IPVM spoke with Kahler about what exactly is in the boxes, Eagle Eye's growth, and factors impacting VSaaS adoption.

In this report we analyze the VSaaS market, and Eagle Eye's current position.

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Comments (13)
Avatar
Brian Karas
Apr 25, 2017
IPVM

Note, we received some detail from Network Optix for licenses they shipped that was added into the report:

For contrast, Network Optix, relatively small in the VMS sector, shipped over 200,000 channel licenses in the past year.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Apr 25, 2017

He looks like he's loving life up there.  Good for him!

(3)
UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Apr 25, 2017

Their niche, to me, is on data security.  Sort like DNA inheritance from its father Barracuda.  

Perhaps, solutions like "IPC lockdown" fits better than what so called VSaaS there. 

But again, what do I know....?

Avatar
Brian Karas
Apr 25, 2017
IPVM

If their niche is cyber security, I think they could go about that in a more practical manner. Provide on-site storage, but facilitate connectivity through a cloud service that handles encryption, user auth, etc. More or less, what OpenEye is doing in that sense.

 

(2)
TM
Ty Mullen
May 03, 2017
COR Security, Inc.

They have that offering as well. 

U
Undisclosed
Apr 25, 2017

If their niche is cyber security they should tell Dean to stop whining about cyber.

What's with the actual physical servers anyway?  It's 2017, you're not on virtual machines? 

Avatar
Jonathan Lawry
Apr 25, 2017
Trecerdo, LLC

RT, even virtual machines need to run on bare-metal at some level, n'est-ce pas? 😜

(2)
(1)
UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
May 03, 2017

Aren't they more of a off-site safety storage than a VSAAS provider?  They require a dvr-like box onsite (it is a dvr) and then upload to the cloud.  You can't do it with just a camera at the site in my understanding.   So it's honeywell but uploading the dvr content to a safe facility for both storage and some 'cloud access'.   It's that good old 'use the word cloud' for anything you sell now.

Avatar
Brian Karas
May 03, 2017
IPVM

The on-site box is their Bridge, which in most scenarios is more of a video cache/buffer than actual storage, as they are not sized to hold video for typical durations of weeks to months.

As Eagle Eye explained it to me (we have not tested/verified this), the basic flow of data is:

  1. Bridge unit records video from camera locally.
  2. Bridge uploads video to cloud server
  3. Cloud server replicates video to other servers for resiliency/backup
  4. Cloud server then sends message to Bridge that the video has been received/stored safely
  5. Bridge deletes video (or, more likely, marks it to be overwritten when needed).

Additionally, viewing clients never connect directly to the Bridge/cameras, recorded video is streamed from the cloud-stored video, and live video is tunneled through their cloud servers and streamed from a cloud server to the viewing client.

Without Internet connectivity/cloud storage, Eagle Eye is severely limited. An extended Internet outage (several days) would likely result in lost video, as the Bridge unit is specified as having a 2-day buffer (though in reality it may be a little more). I think that makes them more VSaaS than cloud-backup, for better or worse.

 

Avatar
Ray Bernard
Jan 13, 2018

Brian,

I'm going to reach out to you directly about Eagle Eye. But I'll also provide some info here.

A client engaged me to evaluate two VMS systems, one on-premises and the other Eagle Eye. Taking a very close look at how the Eagle Eye system is designed and what it's like to use it, I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth of engineering applied around two aspects of the system: user experience and bandwidth management.

A lot of good engineering went into addressing the challenges a cloud-based VMS faces. Long term technology trends favor what Eagle Eye is doing, as bandwidth keeps increasing, and the cost of computing keeps decreasing, as does the required power consumption. Small business and residential adoption of cloud-based video trends independently of mediums-size and enterprise adoption. 

Eagle Eye does offer both Bridge units (for buffering) and Cloud-Managed Video Recorder (CMVR) appliances. Some customers want to store video locally but access it remotely, and the performance of the remote video access (whether by browser or mobile app) is very smooth regardless of whether the video is stored on-site or in the cloud.

Engineering for User Experience: I'll give you one example of the good engineering, which is how they built the video timeline and viewing control capabilities. Video metadata (motion, etc.) is always sent to the cloud, regardless of where the video is being recorded. Analytics create what they call a Key Image, a snapshot of the motion-triggering object when it is the largest as it ever gets, and as close to the center of the scene image it ever gets.

Key Images are also sent to the cloud in real time. When you navigate the timeline from one motion event to the next, you can view the Key Image -- which is typically the exact video frame that you want to see. And that view/search capability has the same performance regardless of where video is located at the time, on-site or in the cloud.

Because search is metadata-based (which is a common VMS capability nowadays), its performance is good regardless of the device used for viewing, app or web-based.

Engineering for Bandwidth Management: The VMS gives the integrator and/or end user the technical insight needed to adjust the recording and transmit-to-cloud profiles to take respectful maximum advantage of available bandwidth.

The Eagle Eye VMS provides 13 graph-based system performance metrics. They cover every aspect of bandwidth availability and usage, and local buffering/cloud storage performance, that you want to see to optimize the recording and video transmission to cloud configuration.

Sorry for such a long comment, but I didn't want to make any assertions without backing them up. Between the website pages and downloadable documentation, there is plenty of information available, including on the Eagle Eye VMS cyber security profile.

-Ray

(1)
U
Undisclosed #4
Jan 13, 2018

How has Eagle Eye's purchase of Brivo affected their growth?

Avatar
Hans Kahler
Jan 13, 2018
Eagle Eye Networks

Full disclosure - I work for Eagle Eye (I'm also the guy in the picture at the top of this article)

To be clear - Eagle Eye did not buy Brivo.  Our CEO and Founder, Dean Drako, bought Brivo.  We are two different companies with the same owner.  We work together on a lot of different fronts and even share a booth at many trade shows, but we are operated independently.  

As far as our growth goes since Dean's acquisition of Brivo, it has certainly helped us.  This picture was taken in April of last year, and growth has been even better than we expected back then.  

(1)
U
Undisclosed #4
Jan 13, 2018

Thanks Hans,

I am curious though..... just as I believe that Canon continuing to operate Axis and Milestone as separate entities after buying them both is operationally "inelegant", it's hard not to believe the same thing regarding Mr. Drako operating two complementary companies independent of each other - vs the much more operationally elegant combination of one combo company that offers two complementary functionalities in one product.

What are you thoughts on this? (if you are able to respond; I can understand if not).