VSaaS: Drivkrafter för betalningsvilja

Sammanfattning: Cloud based services known as ”Software as a Service” has in the past few years become very popular in the IT industry. Hence it is not surprising that the concept also has reached the security industry and the market for camera surveillance, where the concept ”Video Surveillance as a Service” (VSaaS) has become a buzzword. This is much because of new business opportunities for the vendors and easier camera management for the customer. Axis Communications AB is the world-leading provider of network based camera surveillance has entered this market with their service Axis Video Hosting System (AVHS). Problem definition: There are good reasons to believe that VSaaS has the potential of being a successful commercial service. But yet the growth of this market has not reached the hopes of the industry. This means that there is a resistance among the end customers to embrace and pay for the concept of video surveillance as a service. Another key factor for VSaaS to be successful is for all the participants in the value system that together creates the VSaaS service to overcome any barriers. Is it simply the price that the end customer sees as an issue or can it be that the service lacks any functionality, or that the existing functionality does not match the needs of the end customer? And which barriers in the value chain are there to be overcome, and what possibilities are there to solve these barriers? Delimitations: To create the VSaaS service physical hardware needs to be connected to software, and then packaged to a final service that can be delivered and installed to the end customer. The decision of what which each part of the value chain will contribute with will follow Axis’ current business model. This master thesis does not aim to quantify how much the end customers are willing to pay or to look at the profitability. End customers are restricted to retail. V Purpose: The purpose with this master thesis is to examine the driving forces behind the incentives to pay for this service among all the parties in the value chain as well as the end customer. Method: This master thesis is conducted as a case study at Axis Communications AB. The study is based on internal documentation and qualitative internal and external interviews with different stakeholders involved in delivering VSaaS to an end-user. Thesis conclusions: According to the theory the incentives to pay could be described as the perceived value of a good or service. Since VSaaS is combined effort by several parties in ecosystem every member of that system must also see their benefit to embrace the service. Response from the interviewees revealed that there exist several barriers both for end customers to buy VSaaS and VSP’s willingness to sell it, and for them to accept the idea of selling surveillance as a service. The main barriers are for end customers to accept to pay for video surveillance as a service, infrastructure, lack the need of advanced functionality, and that some VSP’s prefer to sell other products with better margins. Further a price analysis revealed that the price is a problem in the low-end segment of the market, but is in line with or below similar solutions sold by system integrators. The conclusion of this is that the price alone is not an issue. The conclusion is thus that the price or a specific feature alone is not what will determine the end customer’s incentive to pay for this service. Instead there are several factors that affects each other, and across the whole ecosystem.