Guardian pilots OzVision roll-out

WOBURN, Mass.--OzVision, a video technology development company, plans to widely release its remote video monitoring service in the first quarter of 2008, said its president, Avi Lupo. OzVision has undergone several partnerships to test and define its video application service, one of which was with super-regional security company Guardian Protection Services of Warrenville, Pa. In January of 2007 the two companies began beta testing a video service application and in July 2007 Guardian officially launched its remote video monitoring service, Genie Vision. "The OzVision system enables Guardian Protection to expand its service offerings to its customers and provides them with video services for security and business management applications," said Lupo. "The most important goal for us in this partnership was to develop a business model and get feedback from customers to help us define our market strategy before releasing this widely to the market." Jeff Szajnecki, vice president of commercial sales for Guardian, emphasized that Genie Vision is primarily marketed as a "management tool to help business owners stay on top of their business 24/7," opposed to an alarm verification service. The service allows business owners to access and monitor their video accounts via an interactive and personalized Web interface that is hosted and supported by OzVision and allows clients to be notified of events via their PC or mobile device. "This took a tremendous amount of commitment and resources," said Szajnecki. "It's not something that you can just pick up out of the box and install. We invested a significant amount of time and finances to this service because we are committed in the long run to the remote video category ... this is something that differentiates us from our competitors and really focuses on value-added services." Szajnecki said that Genie Vision has more than 100 customers since its July launch and said the service has picked up significant momentum. "Customers with chain accounts and multiple locations are very intrigued by this service," he said. Lupo said there are approximately 30 other monitoring companies in the process of launching similar video service applications in the upcoming months.