Hosted Video Taking Off! Hundreds of Channels Per Week!
Big news coming out of mega camera manufacturer, Axis. They have confirmed [link no longer available] that "hosted video is taking off, with hundreds of new channels being installed each week." Not tens, not dozens, not scores, but hundreds!
Let's appreciate how 'big' this is. Axis's 2012 revenue was ~$600 million USD and they roughly shipped 1 million channels (cameras and encoders) in that time. That is ~20,000 channels per week and, of them, a few hundred are hosted video - working out to be 1 to 2% of their total channels.
This is after years of pushing it and setting up more than 30 service providers [link no longer available] around the world. Indeed, based on this news, the average Axis partner is moving about 10 channels per week.
The Good News
There is a bright light at the end of this tunnel and Axis is acknowledging it [link no longer available]:
"Yet with the emergence of easy onboard storage solutions, where the camera or encoder acts as the recorder itself, some integrators who haven’t embraced the hosted concept are disregarding it as an option for small system IP solutions. There are many reasons why a hosted solution would be a great option for an end user, but the main sweet spot is the multisite installation where only a few cameras are needed per site, whereas onboard storage is better for single-site deployments." [Emphasis added]"
No doubt, onboard storage is increasing in popularity and Axis has done an excellent job at promoting and packaging it (i.e., ACC). We are seeing amazing adoption of it, at levels that blow away their hosted video. That's not surprising - the value proposition of eliminating recorders plus no monthly fee is highly attractive.
What we find weird is Axis's segmentation of hosted video for multi-site and onboard storage for single site. There is no technological rationale for this. Axis product positioning artificially creates this. All onboard storage needs is a cloud based front end (no need for hosting video on the cloud) to enable access from any site (like what March is doing for their recorders).
We expect Axis to steadily steer their promotions to ACC as they feed the winner and slowly admit the obvious - the failure of AVHS to become a mainstream offering.