Interview: Envysion's Matt Steinfort and Rob Hagens

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing two leaders from one of the up-and-coming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies here in the Boulder, Colorado area: Envysion.  I was lucky to get to work with both Matt Steinfort (Envysion's CEO) and Rob Hagens (CTO) while we worked at Level 3 Communications.  Since leaving Level 3, Matt and Rob and the Envysion team (including Darren Loher, another outstanding engineer from Level 3) have been doing some pretty innovative work around video services on the Internet.  But I've said enough...let's let Matt and Rob tell the story:

1. What does Envysion do?

Steinfort: Envysion provides Managed Video as a Service (MVaaS) to customers to enable them to better understand and manage their numerous remote locations.  Said in plainer English, we provide a video service that gives people access to live and recorded video in a very simple and scalable way so that they can understand what is going on in their locations, learn from it, and improve the way that they operate.

2. What is Envysion’s unique competitive advantage?

Steinfort: We’ve got a number of competitive advantages.  Among the most compelling of these are the ease of use and scalability of our service.  There are a lot of companies out there today that tout video as a great operational improvement tool, but their solutions were designed to work in a single site at a time and to be used by someone in IT or security.  Our solution is the only enterprise grade video service that works easily within the constraints of large customers’ network and IT capabilities and is easy enough to use that everyone from the CEO to a brand new marketing intern could use it.

3. How much bandwidth does a typical Envysion video stream use? 

Hagens: There is not a black and white answer to this because you have to factor both quality and resolution into the equation. Quality is a measure of how lossy the compression algorithm is run at. You could run 10 fps at low quality over 50Kbps, but the picture would look "pixilated" or "blocky".

Resolution is a measure of the total number of pixels that are used to render the image. Resolution in the video world is typically described as the number of pixels used horizontally and vertically. Today we support 320 by 240 resolution. DVD quality is typically 720 by 480. That is 4 times as many pixels as 320 by 240 which would drive much higher bandwidth.

A typical camera at 10 frames per second, 320 by 240 resolution would consume about 150Kbps with good quality. Envysion video is always recorded at a specific resolution, frame rate and quality. However, because of all the complexity described above, Envysion has built a dynamic bandwidth adjustment into its streaming technology. When viewing the video remotely, the system will dynamically adjust the bandwidth consumed in order to "fit" within the Internet access connection being used by the customer. This happens automatically without any customer intervention. This is a good example of how Envysion Video "just works better" across the Internet.

Steinfort: That's one of our key differentiators, our ability to dynamically throttle the amount of bandwidth that we use to stream video based on what is available.  It enables us to work on low speed connections such as ISDN and satellite, and ensures we don’t ever clog the networks that are also being used for mission critical applications (like credit cards processing).

(Please click the continuation link below for the rest of the interview)

4. Tell us what makes streaming video special. What does YouTube use? What is flash video?

Hagens: youtube and most video sites use progressive download technology. In this, the clip begins to download immediately after you click to play. There is a delay while video is buffered. The video is saved automatically to disk in temporary storage and then played from that location. This technology works very well for a video that is played from start to finish. It also allows users to pause playback. Think of this technology somewhat like playing a tape. Streaming video is more like playing a CD. You can start streaming the video from any point in the timeline. The advantage of streaming is that it is very easy to jump around the timeline of video (forwards/backwards). Typically, progressive download makes it more difficult to jump around. For instance, you have to wait until the entire clip downloads until you can skip to the end.

Flash defines a codec (method of encoding video).  It can be streamed or dowloaded by progressive download.

5. Envysion is a great example of a “Software-as-a-Service” company.  How do you think the SaaS model enables Envysion to improve your customer’s experience?

Steinfort: SaaS is the perfect model for the rapidly evolving world of video surveillance.  People are discovering more and more ways to leverage video to improve their operations and this is driving a lot of potential value added feature development.  SaaS enables us to rapidly react to our customers requirements and roll new features into the service that everyone of our customers can take advantage of.  It eliminates the need to manage large scale distributed software upgrades and version control projects and keeps customers on the technology curve.  Retail and other customers also benefit from not having to manage the complexity of a large number of distributed, stand-alone systems.

6. Envysion has added value to surveillance video by correlating video with point-of-sale terminal data.  How does that help your customers?

Steinfort: Tying video to specific events at a location is an incredibly powerful aspect of our service.  It gives you the context of what actually happened behind the data and numbers you already have on your business.  When all you have is data, you can look at an exception report for a store and see that they had an excessive number of void transactions, which is troubling.  You’d then likely sit down with the manager and ask him about it.  He may not remember it, he may not tell you anything – you are left to guess and have limited ability to fix it.  With video, you could pull up the video of every single void with the manager sitting right beside you and you could both learn from what happened.  Did you identify a training opportunity?  Did you uncover a problem with one of your employees?  The added context of video enables operators to improve their profitability by letting them better understand and react to their business.

7. How do your customers use your Internet-based solution to improve upon a traditional surveillance solution?

Steinfort: The key here is to enable people other than a single person in IT or in the security group to use video in ways that help them do their jobs more efficiently and in ways that haven’t been possible before.  Imagine the excitement you get by providing the marketing group access to 100s or 1000s of remote locations where they can quickly assess the buying patterns, traffic patterns and demographics associated with any customer, any sale, in any location.  The traditional benefits of surveillance (security, risk) are still there, but they are dwarfed in comparison by the operational and marketing benefits that can be realized.

8. How do you make sure your customer’s surveillance video is secure from hackers?

Hagens: Envysion uses a proprietary, 3-way handshake that requires a unique cryptographic token to stream video. This token is changed each time video is played.

9. How does Envysion plan to expand your business into other areas?

Steinfort: Our core competence is making a video very easy to get onto the Internet from a lot of locations in a way that is both scalable and easy to use.  When you abstract it to that level, the applications for our business are endless.  We are looking to take our core service into other verticals, such as Financial Services and Hospitality.  We are also experimenting with some other business models that are more focused on providing controlled access to a lot of people to a closed set of video content.  Look to hear more on this in the coming quarters.

10. What surprises do you see coming in the Internet multimedia space over the next few years?

Steinfort: I believe that you will continue to see video becoming a much more integral, and interactive, part of both consumer and business applications.  You are seeing it already with MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube on the consumer side.  I would expect businesses to follow this trend by making interactive video a part of their standard operating procedures.  You are seeing companies move to Internet based training, digital signage and menu boards that are managed in central way, etc.

Comments

[Alexander Mes]

I'd like to point out that you are wrong in section 4. Where you write: "Typically, progressive download makes it more difficult to jump around. For instance, you have to wait until the entire clip downloads until you can skip to the end.".

You can jump around your timeline with progressive download even if the video isnt downloaded. There are easy solutions to this but its not build-in the standard videoplayer that adobe supplies with flash (though I expect it will be with the next release of Flash CS).

Nice interview though, but I had to point this out because this is a common mistake about prog. download that people make and sometimes even leads to heavy budget solutions where just a few lines of code would do the trick.

[surveillance systems]

A surveillance system consist of a cameras and a digital video recorder this has the capacity to record video in a digital format. The system stores video on a hard disk, which can then be replayed. This system also has the capability to allow remote viewing over the Internet. Other features include viewing from your cell phone, License plate capture and recognition.

[Matt]

Ike - thanks for asking Rob and I to do the interview, it was fun. I've also enjoyed reading your blog as it keeps me connected to the telecom space. I am continually struck by the similarities between what you and Rob did for the Softswitch market and what we are trying to accomplish with Managed Video as a Service. Hopefully in a year or two I can look back and say we had even close to the success that you had in defining the Softswitch category.

-matt

[Dan Caruso]

Nice. Well done interview. I think this does more to explain Envysion to the investor and technical community than anything else we've done.