 Tom here from Lawrence Systems. We're going to talk about Unify's decision to end of life in January of 2021. Today is July 7th of 2020, so less than six months from now, the end of life, the video.ui.com and basically extinguish the self-hosted video software from Unify. We're going to talk about some of the details about that, ramifications, what we're going to be doing about it, and hopefully Unify changes your mind about that and I'll get into the nuanced details. But first, if you'd like to learn more about me and my company, head over to LawrenceSystems.com. If you'd like to hire a short project, there's a hires button right at the top. If you'd like to help keep this channel sponsor-free and thank you to everyone who already has, there is a join button here for YouTube and a Patreon page. Your support is greatly appreciated. If you're looking for deals or discounts on products and services we offer on this channel, check out the affiliate links down below. They're in the description of all of our videos, including a link to our shirt store. We have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and new designs come out, well, randomly. So check back frequently. And finally, our forums, forums.laurentsystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics you've seen on this channel. Now, back to our content. So I did a video back on April 1st, 2019. No, it was not an April Fool's joke. It was Unify and the fact that they were saying, hey, we're going to be focusing on this new product we're working on called Protect. And this new product we're working on is going to be a replacement for Unify Video. And now we have the announcement right here that starting January 1st, 2021, all available Unify Video resources will focus on Unify Protect. No software hardware revisions, no customer support, no security updates, and very importantly right here highlighted. And of course, the most security updates really is important too, but all cloud operations will be shut down and videoui.com will no longer be accessible, which makes this a bigger deal. And why I say that is, normally with the Unify Video platform, you don't have to open up a port because you could just send the clients to video.ui.com and register the system there. It was a really simple way to do it. So they would always be able to get to the system inside or outside. No network port mapping. So you didn't have to worry about exposure. Now the only solution once this gets shut down in January 1st is going to be to move people to opening up the port. Well, if there's no security updates, there's a flaw in the system. Now we have a bigger problem. And this is overall an aggravation by quite a bit. And let me explain. So when Unify Video first came out, we were pretty excited. They had cameras that were good, easy to set up, actually one of the easiest ones to set up, standard PoE cameras, a little bit expensive. But technically, they're kind of building in a license fee because you got the Unify Video software for free. And the Unify Video software only worked with the cameras. So it worked to sell more of their products, which I thought was a good idea from a marketing standpoint. Hey, we'll have these cameras that are, you know, good. We've had great luck with the cameras overall. The Unify Video software was buggy at first, got better over time, but there was an exception. You always had to make sure you built a server capable of handling the number of cameras you wanted to throw at it. That was where I think Unify had a lot of trouble with support because people would use some old computer and say, this computer will be the system that uses these cameras and runs the Unify Video software, and they would under-spec it. Matter of fact, most of the support problems we had helping people with it was they would have a machine way too slow with way too many cameras that wasn't able to keep up. That was a real issue at first. And I realized this has probably pushed them over to going, hey, we can design and build our own hardware on Protect and solve these problems by selling people, you know, like the one I have behind me, the Unify Protect box I reviewed recently and going, hey, we can solve these and they work with a predefined number of cameras and that would be the way forward. That's probably the internal thinking that's going on here. But I like to say but a lot of this because there's always some exceptions. I kind of get where they might be going. But there it is again, they don't have a clear path. And I say that as someone who got an email from someone I know at Ubiquiti who said, hey, let you know we're announcing this end to life and you've done a lot of videos on this time. And I said, was there a way you guys can consider extending at least for a couple more years just the support for video.ui.com so we don't leave a bunch of these systems we installed kind of in a large here of not knowing what to do next. So here's where we're at. Video.ui.com and that goes away. The phone's going to start ringing for anyone that we sold to. So we've already had to start looking at you know migration path for any of the systems we sold and moving them over to just opening a port or moving them to Unify Protect. That means calling a client that well I sold something in 2018 to and we didn't sell any of these in 2019 because early in 2019 when they kind of made a decision they were going to do video.ui. And I didn't start selling to Protect and even my review while I think Protect's a neat system the fact that I don't have a clear product path from them means it's really really hard for me to say anything other than hey cool home users go into this with your eyes wide open that I don't know when the end of life on this product is. Although you are hosting it yourself it does require online registration that apparently can go away on a six or seven month notice. Now granted it is in 2019 when they announced they quit developing for Unify video but with no real alternative and no easy way around it this is where we are here in 2020. Now I feel with Unify my overall feelings about the company. They have a massive amount of resource you can look up their publicly traded you can look up their market cap. I know market cap is not a direct correlation to the true value of a company. I'm not getting into marketing nuance here or financial nuance about them but they're a company that has an over $10 billion market cap. That means they have some funds. I don't think it would be the end of the world if they extended this a little bit longer and we leave a different impression about the company. Now their other product line is the bread and butter of what they do. Well I don't think that's going anywhere. You know the whole system with the Unify platform, the Unify controller and the self-host that I point back here as I see the switches and there's some Wi-Fi access points that's the true bread and butter. And I think that system allows them the money they make off of that because you know we sell a lot of I know so many people in the market that sell a lot of the Unify networking gear. I think that funds their ventures into you know trying to make a more complete ecosystem where they go hey we can capture this market. But those markets aren't as easy and if you don't have firm dedication to it, well there's a problem. So I don't think there's going to be any drastic change not to mention with the Unify networking platform you get to host the controller yourself on whatever hardware you want. I think that's been the key to success and I think they've tried that in other markets and found it very difficult. You know it's not that I'm playing devil's advocate here it's more about just trying to be realistic about where they are in the market and my thoughts overall in the company. That means will we be selling any protect systems? And I've mentioned this before. Maybe some home users that want to buy them but we're not directly selling these to businesses especially without this clear pathing. Now I will mention because anyone on this topic and it will come up what are the alternatives? What have you been selling? And it's no secret if you go on my channel you're going to see us talking about some Synology systems and we have mentioned before that we have some very large commercial clients. This is very expensive not aimed at all for small businesses but like Tyco owns ExactVision. That is another one that we've looked at that we've used with many of the school districts that we do work with. So there are a few other ones out there but they're generally aimed at the really higher end market they're going to have subscription and recurring fees. This is where Unify I think had a great opportunity to market but my guess is internally I mean companies don't do things arbitrarily they do things because they're trying to make money at it they're trying to make it a profitable business model and my guess is they just decided that self hosting the Unify video was not and Unify Protect they think they can make profitable but without any clear solid announcements to give us confidence where they're at we're kind of left to it the situation we're in. And so my hope is that they will change your mind on this this is why I'm making a video I have to decide how I want to do things going forward in terms of do I even delete the videos I have for the old Unify video software or does those views bring me and I change it all to suggest a completely different product line. They're not something I know that I can really recommend anymore and without someone giving me like an official statement from Ubiquiti we plan to guarantee we have support for X amount of years what are you gonna do? It's like it's hard to recommend and this is not just a Unify problem this problem is much much bigger than Unify, Ubiquiti all these companies have these kind of problems they come out with products that either have lock in licenses or have a cloud dashboard that makes everything work and there is no alternative to it. This challenge comes in and there's a list of other companies you can call out in the commercial market not just the consumer market the consumer market is its own disaster as you get somewhere and I guess you could say these are the pro-sumer market or even the professional markets this is an ongoing issue of support and how do you support some of these systems because if the companies say I'm gonna abandon it only after a few years and you can only turn it on by activating it in their portal and their portal goes away or they just decide to drop that support for the product in their portal it just turns off and now you gotta buy another product and us in the middle right here as a provider I'm not the manufacturer of any of this hardware I have to be very careful what I recommend to my clients because well it can hurt my brand reputation I have to be supported so it's either gonna hurt me in brand or it's gonna hurt me financially because I have to just eat it and buy something on behalf of the client to keep them happy so puts us in an awkward situation so this is where we're at right now and the final one I'll mention because everyone hammers out the cap slots and gets your blue iris lovers we're gonna comment on this video I'm aware of blue iris I don't see it as a commercially sellable product I think it's a neat one with a lot of features for home users but it's not one I recommend we're still going with a lot of Synology systems they've always had great clear pathing of how they're doing things we've talked directly to Synology and they have no problem supporting it they don't have recurring license fees so they check some of those other boxes that we're looking for and a lot of small business are going hey we just need some cameras to watch the parking lot to watch these areas and I don't wanna have to pay for it over and over and over again it's just cameras there's certain things I understand like security, we are ongoing and active engagement and where there's lots of fees because there's updates and active development cameras are, I wanna put this on and I haven't recorded for the next five years and anytime there's a little thing going on in my parking lot I wanna be able just to play it back doesn't seem like it's too hard to do but I think it's probably hard to make profitable and come up with a good business model on it do I hope Unified Protect works out for them? I sure do where does that leave us like I said fuzzy about recommending it so hopefully they change your mind about this so it doesn't create the next level of drama but we didn't sell an absolute ton of them we have a handful of them and our plan really is just gonna be open up the ports if a security problem comes up we've already separated out the system to its own network if a security problem comes up and we can't leave that part publicly exposed our solution is just gonna be to put it behind a VPN which will be inconvenient our ultimate solution for some of them or if we have to either eat it out of pocket or negotiate the cost for the customer is swapping them out to protect systems because once you're vested in a bunch of cameras and you get them installed in your building that's a big part of the expense so I see some path forward but I don't see if I'm starting from ground zero I don't know that I can recommend them it's just their camera systems I still like their other tools I think they don't have they have at least a clear path on that and their product lifecycle on their networking gear is substantially longer than it has been on their camera system so I'll leave that with you thanks oh and I'll leave a link to you can read the forum announcement yourself and feel free to read through the comments I'm not the only one who feels this way thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you'd like YouTube to notify you when new videos come out if you'd like to hire us head over to laurancesystems.com fill out our contact page and let us know what we can help you with and what projects you'd like us to work together on if you wanna carry on the discussion head over to forums.laurancesystems.com where we can carry on the discussion about this video, other videos or other tech topics in general even suggestions for new videos they're accepted right there on our forums which are free also if you'd like to help the channel in other ways head over to our affiliate page we have a lot of great tech offers for you and once again thanks for watching and see you next time