SaaS by the Numbers

  

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Netflix recently made news by publishing a ranking of Internet Service Provider performance based on metrics they observe while delivering streaming content to subscribers. Their report focused primarily on the ability of ISPs to deliver sustained high-speed data to residential users of their online service.

Naturally, this got me to wondering what we can tell about our subscribers based on the Web traffic flowing through our three data centers. As the largest SaaS provider in the security industry, we have an unparalleled view of how real users interact with real security systems over the Internet.

First, some of the big eye-catching numbers to provide a sense of scale. Today we process about 100,000 security transactions per hour (or about 800 million per year) with customer-premise devices like control panels, edge devices, NVRs, and IP cameras. These transactions are spread out over a user population of about 2.5 million people, which means that the average person interacts with their security environment about once per day (not counting passive video observation). Some are much more frequent, of course, but many customers unlock their main doors once in the morning and leave them unlocked all day, which pushes the average lower.

Another interesting question the data is:  What are administrators doing? As you might expect, they’re much busier during the work week than they are on weekends, but they’re still checking in during off hours. This type of remote visibility into building security is one of the key advantages of a hosted solution, and we see this born out in the graphic below, which shows daily administrative activity over a recent three week period.

The other interesting thing about administrators is just how many there are. It used to be the norm in physical security that only a
few highly trained people were allowed to log in and look at data or make changes. We now see a trend toward much wider use of the security management system across the enterprise—albeit with restricted permissions in many cases. We encourage this by not limiting the number of logins that any customer is allowed to have. Those policies and the ease-of-use of Web interfaces translates into a customer base that engages in about 15,000 administrative sessions per day—all in one online system.

So there you have it. A small sample of SaaS by the numbers. The amount of data we can analyze to understand customer behaviors and improve system performance is almost endless. We’ll revisit this theme from time to time and share what we’ve learned.

- Steve Van Till