Herve Fages to head new VSaaS company

CLOVIS, Calif.—Herve Fages, former CEO of Pelco, has a new job heading up MultiSight, a new VSaaS company owned by Schneider Electric.

Designed for retailers, convenience stores, restaurants and other multi-location businesses, MultiSight is offered for a monthly fee. The fee includes installation, hardware, apps (Apple and Android), cloud services and storage, support, maintenance, updates and system health monitoring.

A differentiator for MultiSight, Fages said, is that its “hardware and software is designed for the cloud. We have not taken [existing] security hardware and adapted it to be used in the cloud.”

Fages developed MultiSight with Pelco CTO Greg Millar and launched the service one year ago. With the concept developed and the service up and running in close in to 2,000 sites, Schneider Electric agreed to segment MultiSight as a separate company with Fages as managing director.

While it is operating as a start-up, with a team of 20 engineers, sales people and operations personnel, Fages said it's important to note that MultiSight has the full backing of a major corporation.

The next phase is to take the company from start-up mode to a mainstream company.

One aspect is figuring out how MultiSight will go to market. Up until now, MultiSight has used an informal network of installers. Now it is in talks with systems integrators, distributors and ISP providers to “figure out what is the best way to go and which channel is the most interested and ready for it,” Fages said.

Fages is charged with adding another 2,000 sites in the next six months. He believes it's doable for a number of reasons. “The solution is designed for the cloud and for mobility, and what I mean by that is a true mobile experience, with access from everywhere and with the safety, security and redundancy of the cloud,” he said.

He said MultiSight is committed to 99.9 percent uptime of service, and it will proactively notify a customer of problems. Current customers like that the service is an OpEx model—as such they, “don't have to worry about keeping equipment up to date. … We update all equipment, hardware and software.”

The system automatically adjusts to available bandwidth, he said.

Current customers include specialty retailer Mattress Firm, restaurants and banks. He said potential customers all wanted to do a trial “and we've had 100 percent conversion rate on trials.”