NETGEAR To End VueZone Services Next Year

[Razor512]

In a recent email, Netgear has informed all vuezone customers that it will be discontinuing all cloud services on December 31, 2017.

The vuezone first retailed as a set, containing a base station, and 2 cameras for $300. Vuezone camera systems are 100% cloud reliant.


The message sent by Netgear reads:

Dear Valued Customer,

This letter serves as formal notification that NETGEAR, Inc. will be discontinuing the VueZone Services on December 31, 2017. We will continue to support the VueZone Services until this date in order to allow for future planning by our VueZone customers.

After December 31, 2017, the following will apply:

- All VueZone hardware products including base station and camera will cease to communicate with the VueZone back end

- Any videos and photos you have saved in the VueZone cloud will not be retrievable

- Access to the VueZone web application (my.vuezone.com) and to the VueZone mobile applications will be unavailable to all customers

- VueZone service plans will no longer be supported and no service plan fees will be charged after this date

- NETGEAR Customer Support will no longer provide technical support for VueZone products

For more information on the discontinuance of the VueZone Services, including a step-by-step guide on how to retrieve your videos and photos from the VueZone cloud, please visit our FAQ page.

We know this may come as disappointing news to our VueZone users, but discontinuing VueZone and allocating VueZone resources to our Arlo Smart Home Security System is consistent with NETGEAR's practice of providing cutting-edge networking products that connect people, power businesses, and advance the way we live. NETGEAR appreciates and values our customers, and we are eager to supply your future product requirements with our world-class quality product lines.

Best Regards,
NETGEAR, Inc.
July 1, 2016

 

[RMerlin]

18 months of advance warning? That's very nice.

 

[sfx2000]

Eye-Fi just announced a number of devices to be sunset as well - just after they sold their cloud services to Ricoh.

http://x2migration.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/categories/202767868-EF-1-0-X1-X2-End-of-Life-Information

Lot of folks not very happy there either.. and not a lot of head's up on it.

http://petapixel.com/2016/06/30/eye-fi-brick-older-wi-fi-cards-photographer-arent-happy/

 

[Razor512]

Eye-Fi just announced a number of devices to be sunset as well - just after they sold their cloud services to Ricoh.

http://x2migration.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/categories/202767868-EF-1-0-X1-X2-End-of-Life-Information

Lot of folks not very happy there either.. and not a lot of head's up on it.

http://petapixel.com/2016/06/30/eye-fi-brick-older-wi-fi-cards-photographer-arent-happy/

I just hope that people wake up to these issues as the killing of the first wave accelerates.

 

[Merymkr]

In a recent email, Netgear has informed all vuezone customers that it will be discontinuing all cloud services on December 31, 2017.

The vuezone first retailed as a set, containing a base station, and 2 cameras for $300. Vuezone camera systems are 100% cloud reliant.


The message sent by Netgear reads:

Is there another company that will take over my vuezone system? I don't want to pay for new cameras.

 

[L&LD]

Is there another company that will take over my vuezone system? I don't want to pay for new cameras.

With 'cloud' enabled devices, don't think that you actually paid for the device (in this case, cameras). You only paid for a very short lifespan of the service. (at NG).

The end of 2017 is your chance to pay for hardware that you more 'fully' control.

 

[Razor512]

Nothing is going to take it over, instead, they will essentially brick all of the vuezone hardware. This is sadly the issue with cloud reliant hardware.

While they are offering a discount for newer hardware, it is also cloud reliant, and may also be shut down rather quickly.

 

[sfx2000]

I'm hesitant to call these "cloud" based services, as that tends to give clouds a bad name - it's more along the lines of network based application services - how the backend is implemented is irrelevant...

Some of these services like VueZone, EyeFI - these are just apps that are being hosted somewhere - could be bare metal, could be a cloud instance...

Clouds are more abstract..

 

[Razor512]

It seems that Netgear has decided to extend the service for a little while longer. In a new email, Netgear says:

Dear valued VueZone customer,

On July 1, 2016, NETGEAR announced the planned discontinuation of services for the VueZone video monitoring product line, which was scheduled to begin as of January 1, 2018.

Since the announcement, we have received overwhelming feedback from our VueZone customers expressing a desire for continued services and support for the VueZone camera system. We have heard your passionate response and have decided to extend service for the VueZone product line. Although NETGEAR no longer manufactures or sells VueZone hardware, NETGEAR will continue to support existing VueZone customers beyond January 1, 2018.

We truly appreciate the loyalty of our customers and we will continue our commitment of delivering the highest quality and most innovative solutions for consumers and businesses. Thank you for choosing us.

Best regards,
The NETGEAR VueZone Team
July 19, 2016

While this is somewhat good news as people will be able to go longer without their devices being bricked, there are still many unknowns. These devices are living on borrowed time, and the company can pull the plug at any moment. There is nothing holding them to extend it, just like with pretty much every other cloud reliant device. You buy a cloud reliant camera (vuezone, arlo, dropcam, logitech, and many others), and they can essentially be bricked at a moment's notice. They will eventually shut the service down, and the alternative of essentially having a small discount on a replacement system that suffers from the same cloud reliance, thus will also be shut down likely in the near future.

On the other hand, my very old (oldest one I have) (about 8 years now) Night owl DVR + camera system, has been discontinued for many years, but it still works fine. None of its functions rely on anything hosted by night owl, the only remote service that it uses, are NTP (of which it has a preset list of time.nist.gov, the microsoft server, and a few others, with the option to manually enter in more). If all of the NTP servers were to die, it would at most mean that I would have to manually enter the time whenever I factory reset it.

Overall, Hopefully as more of these cloud fail experiences happen, more people will be encouraged to seek out products which do not rely on a single company keeping servers up, or charging monthly fee for services that are traditionally free.

 

[L&LD]

Razor512, I agree completely with you.

Anything 'cloud based' is a nightmare waiting to happen. Not if it will happen, but when.

 

[thiggins]

Anything 'cloud based' is a nightmare waiting to happen. Not if it will happen, but when.

You better stop using the internet, then.

 

[Razor512]

You better stop using the internet, then.

While the internet means that you are relying on other servers staying up, it is not the same as a cloud reliant product. For example, if the people at Verizon decided that it would be a good idea to connect the sewer line to the server room, and flood it, I would lose internet access, at least until I switched to a different ISP.
If I am paying for a cloud host, and digital ocean decides server power supplies are too expensive, and simply connected every component up to the 120-240V mains power, I would move to a different VPS and get the same end service.

On the other hand, if the people running the servers for your dropcam, vuezone, Arlo, or other cloud reliant camera, decided that they aren't getting enough silicon in their diet, and thus turned to eating the servers, you will not be able to switch to a different provider, or host your own, your investment in the hardware will be wasted, as you have hardware that you still want to use, and is still technically functional, but effectively bricked because it was tied to a specific cloud service with no way to change it.

For those looking for more reasons to why cloud reliance is a big issue, look at every device you own. Look them up on the company website, and see how many are discontinued, imagine if those products were cloud reliant, and stopped working because the company no longer supported them.

 

[thiggins]

You raise some good points, Razor. But cloud is here to stay. Each of us must weigh the pros and cons when choosing products and make informed decisions.

 

[L&LD]

You better stop using the internet, then.

The internet is not a 'cloud solution' to a hardware problem I may have.

The internet is a source of information, which, if not available, I have the resources to get elsewhere.

 

[sfx2000]

Cloud is most definitely here to stay...

Remember, with products and services - how the backend is done is completely abstracted from the architecture behind it.

@Razor512 - the cloud has little to do with a device that requires access to an upstream application service provider - this is not the cloud, this is a hosted (and perhaps managed) service that is tied to a bit of hardware/software inside your network,

 

[L&LD]

sfx2000, sorry, but the 'cloud' hasn't even been allowed in for coffee here yet.

Here to stay? Sure, that is what historians will say in the future.

Today? Hasn't even earned the right of a trial (because it is fundamentally flawed, imo).

 

[sfx2000]

We'll have to agree on a difference of opinion - I've been in the comms business for nearly 20 years now - and SDN/NFV/Virtualization is where big money is going - and it works... OpenFlow, OpenStack, Containers, KVM/Xen/ESXi/HyperV - it's all backend, and it's completely transparent to the end user, except that the services are more reliable, and helps keep costs down.

I'm not seeing any flaws here - and I've doubled down on this in my day job...

 

[thiggins]

The internet is not a 'cloud solution' to a hardware problem I may have.

The internet is a source of information, which, if not available, I have the resources to get elsewhere.

Not everything is hardware. Have you convinced all your customers to give up the internet?

 

[sfx2000]

I'm just going to have to let this one go - as there are many interpretations of the cloud, and the issue at hand has nothing to do with how the backend is built.

Going back to the original post - it's really down to a product that is dependent on an external/upstream source, and it's been moved to end-of-life/end-of-support due to business considerations.

Unfortunately this happens all the time - just wish there was a fallback where perfectly functional gear would remain operational, even at a reduced capability, as this would keep eWaste down to a minimum...

 

[L&LD]

Not everything is hardware. Have you convinced all your customers to give up the internet?

No, not everything is hardware, very true.

But when I am spending my own money (or my customers), I make sure that what I propose to them will be around (and usable) long after I'm gone, let alone the company they bought it from.

In the case of this thread, the cloud reliant cameras are a prime example of what I would steer any of my customers away from. For this very reason.

As I mentioned already, the internet is an addition to the way I used to do things. It hasn't replaced anything yet. Yes, I still have a library card and use their services today.

I don't know one customer that 'needs' the internet, except maybe for the convenience of downloading their bank statements as needed. Others may have different types of customers, but that is not my reality here.