Jeff Burgess Motivational Business Manager
Author

Apparently, in some ways, the book must have failed me, as its purpose was to cleanse forty-five years within the computer industry out of my system. Yet, some two and a half years after retiring, I still have vivid memories, primarily of those BCDVideo years through my retirement in July 2023.

When Reputation Beats Price Every Time

BCDVideo was BCD at its ultimate best, providing guaranteed, customized security recording solutions to some of the world’s most famous brands, all through the global security integrator channel.

Our global security integrator customers were installing our HP- and Dell-based video surveillance security storage servers to secure footage for projects at Wimbledon and Westminster Abbey in the United Kingdom, Oracle and Apple sites globally, and even at Machu Picchu in Peru.

Hard to argue with a quarter-million server-grade security appliances in ninety-one countries. That speaks to trust. And we were in the trust business. An incident happens, where’s the footage? Winning the project was half the battle.

There was always heavy competition for projects.  Any schmuck could sell on price. We would never match a price. Thus, we were never at the lowest cost and had to settle on reputation. As my book says, “It Worked For Me!” We were the only vendor in the market willing to guarantee our solutions would work. We only cost more because we were worth more.

Our greatest advertisement was our competition. “Just like BCDVideo,” my ass.  I never knew whether to be flattered or sue them for defamation of character.

Price only came up before the deal, never after, other than buyer’s remorse, of course. We did quite a few rip-and-replace projects. Out with the old, in with the correct. We never took pride in those; the customer was already in a shitty place, why pile on? We were able to dump those units we replaced with local marinas as boat anchors.

The Moments You Never Forget—For Better or Worse

What we DID take pride in was selling our pristine security footage as a solution. For example, our recording appliance captured the camera activity from the Lord and Taylor store camera in Boston, which caught one of the Boston Marathon bombers dumping his backpack a half mile from that store’s camera.

Another incident that sticks in my brain is from January 6, 2021. Despite all the craziness at the U.S. Capitol, our pristine footage captured the Secret Service escorting then-Vice President Mike Pence out of the main room, through the hallway, and down the stairs.

In yet another example, it seemed I almost took too much pride in it. On a Sunday night in September 2019, my wife Joanne and I were randomly watching 60 Minutes while deciding what to have for dinner. There was a segment on the Houthi militia, with the support of Iran, initiating a 3 a.m. aerial drone attack on the Aramco oil fields about three months earlier, with this security footage provided to CBS by the Saudi government.

Through one of our software partners, BCD had supported video storage at Saudi Aramco oil fields for several years. By Saudi law, those oil fields required one year of video retention, thus roughly one million dollars per year in just video storage costs to protect those gigantic oil containers.

After a couple of minutes, Joanne looked over at me and must have seen my misty eyes and said, “That’s yours, isn’t it?” I started bawling like a baby and said, “Can you fucking believe how clear that footage is at three in the morning outdoors, Saudi time?”

As expected, she replied with “What’s wrong with you?” although she said it with a sense of pride.

On the contrary, sometimes, the pristine footage was the last thing you wanted to see. We had won the global Disney project around 2009 for all their theme parks, including Disneyland Paris, which suffered a horrendous terrorist attack killing over 120 people in November 2015. The UK integrator who installed the project worked closely with the French police.

Although we had nothing to do with it, it was one of those few times I wish we had not been associated with a project.

Behind the Security Footage: Pride, Regret, and Real-World Impact

On a more positive note, when COVID-19 hit the United States in March of 2021, we were invited to work with several of our larger security integrators in converting existing arenas and convention centers into makeshift COVID-19 treatment hospitals. We were able to jointly accomplish this at the United Center in Chicago, the Superdome in both New Orleans and Atlanta, and the Jacob Javits Center in New York.  None of these places was going to hold conventions for some time, that was for certain.

Post-COVID, and once that world returned to whatever the new normal was going to be, they would flip back to becoming sporting arenas and convention centers again. For BCDVideo, it was back to doing what we did best, delivering a mission-critical ingredient within the security ecosystem.

Dare I say, the most important component we delivered was uptime. No one ever had to ask, “What happened to the saved video?” on a BCDVideo security appliance.

We built that reputation with one server at a time. BCDVideo was always an equal-opportunity video surveillance server builder.  We treated them all the same. We never cut corners. I can assure you that the convenience store owner cared about the quality of the security footage from his four cameras just as much as that Four-Star General did about the quality of the security footage from his 700 cameras at the Pentagon.

THAT was what made BCDVideo unlike any other company, simply building boxes to record video; there was nothing simple about it.

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To learn about this entire journey, pick up a copy of 𝙄𝙩 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙈𝙚: 𝙈𝙮 𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙞𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙊𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 today! Also available now in audiobook format!

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