I-View Now partners with COPS Monitoring

HENDERSON, Nev.—I-View Now, a cloud-based video platform company based here, recently announced new capabilities with COPS Monitoring, Bosch, Hikvision and OpenEye.

“We're very excited. COPS Monitoring is a very large wholesaler, and by releasing [OmniView], they're now going into video verification and really what we describe as central station monitoring video services,” Larry Folsom, president of I-View Now, told Security Systems News.

OmniView, a service branded by COPS, is powered by I-View Now's platform, which includes video verification capabilities, video device health monitoring and video guard tours. “This is a way for a dealer to add these services to the product that they were already going to sell to their end user,” Folsom said.

The integration with the company's proprietary Generations automation platform was completed ahead of ISC West 2017, according to Folsom. “The fact that it was a custom integration to Generations was probably the largest challenge and the best opportunity,” he said.

“Hundreds and hundreds of dealers can now use and sell video verification in a way that they couldn't before,” said Folsom.

I-View Now is now integrated into nine central station automation platforms, including from DICE, Bold Technologies, MKS and SGS.

The company also announced at ISC West 2017 that certain cameras from Bosch, Hikvision, and OpenEye can now come I-View Now Ready, meaning that they have a built-in integration to the platform. With the I-View Now Ready program, “We were trying to find ways to leverage software and workflow to reduce the cost of installation,” Folsom said.

“The average device is not built with the purpose of presenting clips that meet The Monitoring Association's standard for video alarm verification,” he said. “We work with these manufacturers to include altering firmware or putting I-View Now in the firmware with this intent that when the product is finished and it's I-View Now Ready, it meets the TMA standard, as well as the PPVAR best practice, to be true video verification.”

“In the case of OpenEye, it's very interesting to us because it's cloud-to-cloud and the cloud is I-View Now Ready, and now the devices attached to their cloud have an extension of these services,” Folsom noted.

“In the case of Hikvision, … the devices themselves have firmware that is compatible with I-View Now, and in that architecture, I-View Now is actually reaching out into the actual recorders at the edge,” Folsom said, noting that the company's integration with Speco works in a similar way.

Folsom said that the timeline for integrating I-View Now is about 120 days from the agreement to its completion. “One of our core commitments is that it's collaborative, that we really work with the manufacturer, of course, but [also] with our dealer customers to figure out what they really want the features and benefits to be.”

I-View Now is currently working on integrations with EagleEye and Tyco's Sur-Gard 5.