Six years ago, looking at the constraints in our own distribution business model, we asked ourselves some difficult and critical questions:

How are our customers, resellers and integrators (you) coping with market changes like comoditization and consumerization of IT and how could we help add more value? It was clear that solutions would come from more focus on services and providing more value to the end-user.

Introducing IP TechView: Remote Management for a Superior Service Experience

In IT and security end-users want a reliable and well-functioning system and a fast and efficient service if anything ever goes wrong. How could we help? What if we could provide our intergrator partners a tool to securely and remotely monitor, configure and manage all IP Technology devices so they could offer a super high level of service at a reasonable cost? What if such a tool lowered partners installation and support cost and helped them make service income?

We started searching but could not find anything adequate for a diverse world of IP end points like cameras, phones, NAS, WiFi-Bridges, Routers and Switches. The idea formed that it would be best if such a remote monitoring and management tool would be cloud based and we could preconfigure the products for our partners to remotely connect to the devices they sold without prior setup. That woudl enable us to ship products directly to partners project's sites and equipment being physically installed by anyone even without product experience, while our partner can finalize and customize configurations remotely to his customers unique needs. Such a platform would also provide life-long remote mainteance access and allow for our customers to create their own RMR opportunities. Cool concept but it sounded like a pipe dream.

How MxMSP™ Empowers Integrators to Deliver High-Level IP Telephony & Infrastructure Support

We had experience in building carrier grade solutions for IP softswitches that resolved NAT traversal problems and after analyzing the challenges to create a universal IP system we decided to give it our best. This original idea led us to invest in creating a suite of tools, dedicated to making our partners  life easier and business more profitable. We called our new platform IP TechView.  We started with a universal multi-vendor solution mainly focusing on IP Telephony (IP Phones, PBX system health and configuration including QoS issues and resolution) and IP Infrastructure (Routers & Switches, Wireless and including remote management of PoE.).

We then discovered that this technology could make a huge difference to IP Camera Intergators. Since we were very knowledgeable and dedicated to the MOBOTIX surveillance community and knew the challenges and improvements we could provide partners to wow their customers, we decided to create a specialized version for the MOBOTIX space. We called it MxMSP. This new specialized platform covers some very important areas to help end-users and partners alike by upgrading and taking their Mobotix system into the cloud. We then moved on to build a follow-up product specifically designed to provide even more value and analytics to the end-user to make the overall solution even more attractive.  This became MxMSP/MxLINQ a Managed Services Platform for Mobotix Partners and a Enduser Cloud Access, Monitoring & Alerts, Recording and Device control solution.   

An Inspiration becomes Reality 

Our vision became what today is IPTechView™ a platform that combines several important tools that have the power to change the economics for our reseller partners and improve the quality and reliability of all the solutions ABP Partners deploy. We build a tool set on one universal cloud platform that includes all the following elements:

A multi-vendor capable cloud based EMS (element management system) and a companion RMM (Remote Monitoring & Management) tool designed to help our resellers grow the services side of their income from a "Break-Fix” business model to a "Preventive Maintenance" or “Managed Services” model.

At first it seemed like we were pursuing a pipe dream. But with years of experience selling and deploying far-end NAT traversal solutions with service providers in the IP Phone service space we knew how to scale systems like NAT traversal or provisioning platforms for 100,000's of diverse multi-vendor devices to support our ITSPs. That gave us a great head-start.

As we were completing our universal IPTechView™ and parts for our IP TechPartner™ platform, we realized that one of our largest customer groups - surveillance and physical security integrators - were missing a very critical link to grow their business. They needed an easy tool for end users that made using technology easier - something that linked end-users to the technology they were investing in. We neede a tool that would include their video management. We knew we needed to add a secure Cloud VMS to our solution. That was the beginning of what resulted in MxLINQ™.

MxLINQ™: The User-Friendly Link to Access and Manage MOBOTIX Devices from Anywhere

MxMSP™ makes MOBOTIX installations easier and faster which helps our partners increase their business by completing more projects with fewer resources. MxMSP™ also provides the added opportunity for integrators to expand their customer service business and increase their recurring monthly revenue. The next missing piece was a better link for the end user to his technology. We wanted to making accessing IP devices easy, being universally accessible on any device, super intuitive and most importantly by simplify all the special features that a product like MOBOTIX had to offer. This became MxLINQ™

Today ABP offers MOBOTIX IP video surveillance cameras optionally preconfigures as MxMSP™-ready, in this case all cameras get shipped from ABP already pre-configured so they show up in the partners MxMSP Platform as un-assigned equipment. This means that when the cameras get installed on site they are already "connected" to the platform. Partners now can remotely connect to all devices as soon as they are plugged in and remotely finalize a project via MxMSP™, regardless of network equipment and with no local server.

Important to mention is that the entire platform is designed to be multi-vendor and manages both physical devices and virtual cloud objects and services.

In addition to MOBOTIX cameras it also supports NAS storage devices, routers and POE switches, with wireless bridges and other devices coming soon. At this point the platform is already very close to the original goal of becoming a single pane of glass to manage all devices and cloud services a reseller needs to manage for his customers.