24 October 2017 - Security Buyer Magazine

Overwhelming interest for Milestone Community Days in South Africa

More than 250 participants attended the two successful Milestone Open Platform of Days (MPOP) in South Africa recently. The events in Johannesburg and Cape Town brought together some of the most successful networked video systems integrators, resellers and distributors in the region. Participants exchanged information about industry trends and challenges, learned about the many applications of the Milestone Systems network video management software, and explored the solutions that are made possible through their strong partnerships. The community in focus The community received a warm welcome by Armand Steffens, Country Manager Africa. Christian Ringler, Director Middle East, Africa & DACH, outlined Milestone’s vision “We make the world see” and the objective of being part of every monitoring installation with video technology worldwide. Key to reaching this is the entire Milestone community, from partners and integrators. More than 150,000 video installations have already been implemented worldwide. Since last year, the company has been focusing on its community; to learn from each other, to profit from the experience of others and to grow together. Ringler emphasized that Milestone is increasingly developing into a common platform. This means that the value proposition is no longer only Milestone’s IP video management software, but the ‘best of breed’ solutions that are offered in conjunction with the community partners. In this way, future-oriented market potentials can be recognized and utilized – for example, video management installations in the areas of “Internet of Things” or “Artificial Intelligence”. Overwhelming positive response Four Gold Solution Partners Axis, Netapp, Vumacam and Promise, gave testimony to the advantages of working together as a community in presentations of their innovative solutions with Milestone Systems. Roy Alves, Axis Communications commented: “The MPOP event each year facilitates the opportunity for Axis to showcase our partnership collaboration with Milestone, highlighting our joint value proposition. Focused booth style exhibition with presentations and many open discussions with other industry players always make this style of event a huge success.” Other participating partners agree. “MPOP is a unique opportunity to display the added value of our solutions for the Milestone ecosystem. Connecting the dots between vendors, added value distributors, consultants, system integrators and end-users in a very focused manner is crucial. That is what Milestone achieves with MPOP”, said Franck Martinaux, Chief Technology Officer, Capsule Technologies. “We were very pleased with the expansion of the event footprint to the Western Cape. Both the Johannesburg and Cape Town events attracted a high calibre audience with promising leads generated over the two days.” -Quintin van den Berg, Product Manager, Integration Partner Program at Bosch Security Systems, Sub-Saharan Africa. Milestone Systems Partner-Awards In order to further emphasize the community idea, Milestone Systems awarded Partner-Awards to thank its strong partners. The winners of the MPOP Africa awards this year were given to: Promise technologies: Best Storage Solution, Cygnetic: Best partner, Camsecure: Best custom development partner, Axis Communications: Best MAP, Compass Visual Security: Fastest growing distributor, Pinnsec: Best distributor and Mark Bense won the Milestone Passion award. John van den Elzen, General Manager, Surveillance Business Unit, Promise Technology. “We are honoured to have received this award from Milestone again. It is validation of our dedication to providing solutions that are purpose-built for the video surveillance market.”

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Johnson Controls enhances user experience with American Dynamics’ Victor/VideoEdge 5.0

Johnson Controls’ newest version of its victor Unified Video Management Systems and VideoEdge Network Video Recorders from American Dynamics provides a transformed, contemporary user interface and new detection and analytics features for increased visibility of the security environment. With victor/VideoEdge 5.0, the updated feature set includes number plate-recognition, perimeter detection, edge-based SD-card failover redundancy and several other advanced surveillance features, delivering greater and faster command and control capabilities. The newly enhanced user interface of the victor video management system (VMS), simplifies day-to-day activities for security operators with both dark and light theme options well-suited for dimly-lit command centre environments. The interface offers a reimagined “home” view that remembers frequently-used features, simplifying forensic investigating and live viewing. Workflow functions have also been redesigned to be more intuitive and a new navigation bar and a variety of menu filters puts usability at the centre of the victor VMS experience. “victor’s transformed graphical user interface makes the security operator’s experience more comfortable and efficient, significantly reducing the number of clicks, while uniquely leveraging Illustra cameras for an additional level of seamless system redundancy,” said Stuart Bettle, Video Product Marketing Manager – EMEA, Security Products, Building Technologies & Solutions, Johnson Controls. “The newest version of victor/VideoEdge enables new levels of awareness with sophisticated video analytic capabilities for vehicle number plate recognition as well as perimeter detection with increased visibility for both exterior and interior environments.” VideoEdge’s new TrickleStor feature has select Illustra cameras and VideoEdge working together to form a cost-effective redundancy and seamless failover solution. If communications between the NVR and cameras are interrupted or stop, the camera automatically detects the anomaly and begins recording video to its SD card. With VideoEdge TrickleStor, once connections are restored, the recorded video is then transferred back to the NVR’s hard drive. When the video is viewed later, operators will not be able to sense there was any outage, thereby capturing line of sight activity and providing a seamless experience. Powerful License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology sends security operators real-time alarm notifications for arriving VIPs or when blacklisted vehicles are detected. Operators utilise “fuzzy match” with Smart Search, victor/VideoEdge’s forensic search engine, to identify commonly confused characters, such as 8 and B, to generate a list of possible matches. Smart Search can also place asterisks (*) and question marks (?) to correlate recorded video and searches when only a portion of a license plate number is known. For more information about the victor Unified Video Management Systems and VideoEdge Network Video Recorders, visit www.americandynamics.net and www.johnsoncontrols.com.