SDM Newswire

Milestone Offers Open Learning at Annual Symposium

Award Winners left to right: JCI’s Gerry Pittman, BriefCam’s Amit Gavish, Axis Communications’ Fredrik Nilsson, Milestone’s Lars Thinggaard and Eric Fullerton, CSC’s Tim Holloway, Convergint Houston’s Jonathan Smithwick, Stone Security for LDS’ Brent Edmunds

At the ninth annual Milestone Integration Partner Symposium (MIPS) conference hosted by Milestone Systems, Copenhagen, the open platform company in IP video management software, the focus was channel training, networking and knowledge sharing.

Attendee Mark McCourt, publisher of SDM, noted several interesting trends presented:

IP video surveillance systems are now in 50 percent of systems with more than 32 cameras (large enterprises) in the United States.
Analog makes up 80 percent of the less than 16 camera installations.
The IP Video market is at $2.5 billion and will exceed $25 billion by 2020.
The speeding adoption of IP can be in part attributed to the technology itself (business functionality, scalability and total cost of ownership), the severe recession three years ago leveraging technology to reduce headcount (in this case guard force), and the improved education and knowledge among installing companies and enterprise buyers.

The conference was held March 2-4 in San Antonio, Texas. More than 200 people attended from the Milestone ecosystem of distributors, systems integrators, consultants, Manufacturer Alliance Partners and Milestone Solution Partners.

The first day of the gathering was devoted to training courses in sales and technical know-how for the high-end XProtect® Video Management Software (VMS) offerings, and for the Milestone Integration Platform SDK (Software Development Kit), used for integrating third-party systems and devices. The remaining days included top management reports and guest speakers. A record number of exhibitors introduced their latest offerings to the Milestone channel partners in the Technology Showcase: Allied Telesis, Arecont Vision, Axis, Basler, Briefcam, Canon, firetide, FLIR, Gish Technologiy, Honeywell, HP, IBM, intransa, Iomnis, IQinVision, Mobotix, Open Options, Panasonic, Pivot3, Rimage, SONY, SureView Systems, Vivotek and WYNIT.

Lars Thinggaard, president and chief executive officer of Milestone Systems, presented the first keynote speech covering the company’s historical progress, current status and future prospects for growing business through open platform integrations.

End users shared their security experiences using the Milestone platform: Terry Haukom from the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation, Sergeant Red Buckland from Louisiana State University, Robert Bentley and Charles R. Pierce of Leapfrog Training & Consulting described applications, anecdotes, results and best practices. Other speakers included Fredrik Nilsson, general manager of Axis Communications Inc; Kurt Gish, president of Gish Technology; retail specialist King Rogers, chief executive officer (CEO) of KRG Analytics; and Keven Marier, CEO of ConneX International.

Awards for 2010 outstanding performance and collaboration with Milestone Systems were also announced:

Manufacturer Alliance Partner of the Year was Axis Communications for its breadth of product line allowing the channel to pair XProtect VMS with many different user environments and deployments, increasing the use of HD technologies.
Milestone Solution Partner of the Year was BriefCam for its Video Synopsis technology that is tightly integrated with XProtect, and for their strategic alignments in the field that produced great results.
Distributor of the Year was CSC, who has embraced the video-enabling concept of the Milestone open platform and steadily increased sales year on year.
National Partner of the Year was Johnson Controls Inc (JCI), a national reseller of Milestone VMS, who has proven to be a leading revenue partner in North America, demonstrating commitment from corporate to local branches.
Regional Partner of the Year was Convergint Houston, who achieved the highest single branch revenue in the country for Milestone Systems. They were praised particularly for a 3,000-camera transportation project that was landed in December 2010.
Installation of the Year went to Stone Security for its comprehensive work with a global religious organization, leveraging Milestone’s integration with Lenel OnGuard access control.

Milestone Systems also holds the MIPS partner events in other regions: this year it will be held in Bangkok in July and Copenhagen in September.

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