Why An Open Platform Will Define Your Success in IP Video Surveillance - A Milestone for Security
Posted on Fri, Feb 05, 2010
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
What would it be like to do a remodel on your home, and be forced to use a mediocre refrigerator, dishwasher and furnace to get the best electrical contractor in the business?
To Milestone Systems, the self-described "leading global developer of open platform software for managing IP network-based video surveillance", Security, like IT, finally has options. Those options can be called ‘best of breed' applications or solutions. You should find the best hardware and software for your application and demand interoperability from other best of breed systems using industry standards.
To Milestone executives like Tim Palmquist, the open platform allows best-of-breed solutions to ‘video enable' business: reducing costs, optimizing processes, protecting people and assets - and ultimately increasing value in the organization's products and services.
"It is really about the security executive being able to shape solutions to meet their need" said Palmquist, Director of Sales for the Western United States and Canada.
"It is no longer necessary to compromise. To build an end-to-end system to meet your needs doesn't require a one vendor approach. You can get the best technology and quality partners who want to work with you to integrate, deploy and maintain a high level of performance."
In the Great Conversation, the ASG Security Summit keynotes will be focusing on a 2020 roadmap and working backwards to what can be done in 2010 to create it. To Palmquist, the focus will be on the user interface. "The end user must eventually have a unified user interface across all situational occurrences and alarms. This doesn't imply one manufacturer", continued Palmquist. "End to end does not mean a box or what we call a proprietary jail."
Today, according to Palmquist, there are many issues that get in the way of making ‘best of breed' decisions: "Legacy investments, familiarity of a user interface, even if it can't perform needed functionality, as well as the financial business case not taking into account TCO (total cost of ownership) ... all of these are examples. But the question remains: Is your video as good as your access control?", said Palmquist.
Milestone believes that users have more control then they leverage. "Empowering an ecosystem to work together, collaboratively, breaks the log jam", says Palmquist. "We can break the barriers to change by working together to get the solutions we need."
An example of how Milestone is working together with other companies can be seen in the amount of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that enable value-added integration with other systems like Point Of Sale, Automatic Teller Machines, Access Control, Gates, Lighting, HVAC, Fire Alarms, Analytics, biometrics, etc.
Milestone solutions are in more than 50,000 customer installations worldwide, from all industry sectors: retail, hospitality, finance, manufacturing, distribution, education, healthcare, utilities, property management, transportation, government, and the military.
Milestone is featured in the Summit Virtual Exhibit Hall and is offering their article on Hallmarks of a True Open Platform in preparation for the Summit.