Manything offers a cloud video solution

OXFORDSHIRE, England—Manything, a provider of cloud video recording and remote monitoring services based here, is making great strides in North America with its Manything Pro security solution, which also provides integrators and dealers with a new source of RMR, according to Manything CEO and co-founder James West.

West told Security Systems News that the company, which was founded in 2012, has now grown to empower professional security dealers and integrators to offer remote viewing and offsite cloud surveillance recording, creating new RMR opportunities for them.

“We have been able to realize an almost three-fold reduction in our pricing structure from where we were a year ago,” West told SSN. “So there is room for margin and for RMR for a dealer or integrator, and they can still be price competitive.”

So what did the company do to reduce its pricing so drastically?

“We've got enough sites active now to be able to refine our model, and our costs are scalable based on how much data you are sending up to the cloud and how long you are keeping it,” West explained. “And what we have noticed is the average amount of video sent up per camera hour is lower than what we had anticipated, which is good news, and one of the drivers to reduce the cost.”

He continued, “And on the technology side, we have completely reworked the camera code so that we are more efficient in the data we are sending up to the cloud. We also moved to more efficient encoders, so we are moving to H.265 as we speak, which will enable us to increase the resolution without increasing price.”

Another way that Manything is making it easier for integrators to move to more of an RMR-based model is by making the invoicing and billing much easier for them.

“We really understand this challenge and realized that we have to take care of that end user payment all the way through the channel and handle it in a number of different ways,” he said. “For example, installers who want to customize the price for each job can use our platform to set the mark-up that they want and have our system go and collect the payment from that end user and remit the mark-up that they have specified for that job.” A white-label solution is also available for large dealers and integrators.

The Manything app is not only used by the end user but it also helps a dealer or integrator on installs, as well as with managing accounts, troubleshooting, pushing updates and providing customer service.

West said that the company also encourages integrators and dealers to take the Manything app and call it their own. “We can turn around that fully branded solution for integrators in about 10 days free of charge,” he noted. “The average cost to develop an app in the U.S. is $50,000, so we are excited about this because we are giving integrators a huge upgrade in services and software for no investment.”

Moving forward this year, West is excited to continue integrations with companies such as Hikvision, Dahua and Axis Communications.

“We are pretty close to releasing a version of our code that will run on the Hikvision HDTVI range of recorders,” said West. “This is a really big deal because it is a software-only update to the recorder that an integrator can do from their smartphone to upgrade customers' legacy systems to full cloud recording and remote control, even on a digital coax camera platform, which is quite exciting.”

The company is also focusing on introducing the first phase of analytics and multi-user support later this year, he said.

With more than 850,000 users globally, West said the company's rate of growth has been significant. “We are really starting to see some traction with our professional solution, and not just in the SMB market but on the enterprise level as well, which has been a pleasant surprise.”