UAE operator Etisalat has announced the launch of a video surveillance and analytics service to provide small and medium-sized businesses with a service that addresses their security and regulatory compliance needs. Etisalat Video Surveillance VSAAS offers customers end-to-end managed services, security surveillance with analytics, business intelligence, upgradeable cloud storage, as well as web and mobile access, on a monthly subscription model. 

VSAAS offers heat maps, people-counting, a security system and queue management. It covers all CCTV requirements, ranging from supply to installation, testing, commissioning and maintenance. It will provide cameras, network video recorders with local storage, cloud video management with analytics, web access, a mobile app, and basic seven-day cloud backup as default for continuous streaming. 

Customers can view live and played-back recordings remotely, get alerts on critical transactions and store data over a secure cloud server.

Tarifica’s Take

This offering from Etisalat appears to be a very strong one in terms of carving out new markets and finding reliable, high-revenue customers. As operators across the board have seen it become more difficult to rely exclusively on traditional telecom and mobile-data services, they have been exploring a range of ways to offer added value, especially in the realm of new technologies.

Etisalat Video Surveillance VSAAS is a powerful offering in that is checks more than one box among the desiderata for value-added offerings. It offers access to a secure cloud server with storage, the actual surveillance features (enabled by hardware provided by the operator) and the addition of built-in analytics for the surveillance. The interface via mobile app makes it relatively seamless to use.

And beyond that, the offering intelligently targets a client base that is particularly appropriate. SMBs are likely to be in the market for such solutions, in that they are unlikely to have developed it themselves or engaged in a partnership with a major technology firm to design a tailored system, as with a large enterprise.

In addition, SMBs are quite a good market for operators in terms of economy of scale. A deal with an SMB carries with it a large number of users at once, and the nature of the business at hand makes it likely that the service will be needed on a recurring basis, medium-term or long-term. Simply put, SMBs are less fickle than consumers, and once the operator has locked in this revenue, it can count on retaining it as long as it actually meets the needs of the client.

Of course, that is the most important factor here, and if Etisalat has designed its video surveillance and analytics solution well, it should have little difficulty selling it to SMBs that are already customers, as well as acquiring new clients that are attracted by VSAAS’s features. In addition, the cloud-based nature of the product most likely makes it likely that it can be updated and adapted in response to changing conditions within the client’s sphere of operations.