Milestone Systems is catching up and moving forward. As the company is installing some large national accounts the company is rolling out a high-end version of its open platform-based X-Protect line of video management software aimed at transportation, government and city surveillance markets. With X-Protect Corporate 4.0, Milestone is hoping to carry its success in the mid-range enterprise market--typically measured in deployments of several hundred cameras--where it holds a 50 percent share, into the large-scale segment, where it trails Genetec.
Corporate 4.0 will incorporate the Milestone Federated Architecture concept, which was outlined broadly at Milestone's Integration Platform Symposium in Hollywood last February. Milestone Federated Architecture allows a high degree of scalability, retaining centralized management functionality while permitting user a wide range of options over configuration and policies. Alarm and monitoring capabilities are integrated with multi-layered maps.
The new release supports edge storage, but adds tighter integration with centralized storage at the server, said Eric Fullerton, chief sales and marketing officer for Milestone. For instance, the software features a tool that allows recording stored at the camera to be easily dropped into the correct place in a server recording. If there is an outage at the server, or a loss of bandwidth or connection, operators can retrieve the video from the camera and drop it in the right place. "It is as stable as old coax-based video," Fullerton said.
The software also has a bookmarking feature that allows operators to easily mark and later return to key video footage. Milestone has made no secret of its wish to grab a larger share among high-end verticals such as transportation, traffic management, urban safety and critical infrastructure protection, where camera deployments are measured in the thousands, and a premium is placed on standards-based integration across multiple video, access and sensor platforms. Not only does Milestone face competition from other VMS manufacturers such Genetec, OnSSI and NICE Systems, physical security information management vendors such as Proximex and Vidsys are also jockeying for position, as are major networking companies such as Cisco Systems.
