UAE – Communication and working together are the key in informing customers about a shift from product focus to platform focus for a video security software manufacturer.
Kirsten Højland, Milestone’s Vice President of Global Marketing, said the changes were a natural part of a continuing dialogue between the company and its many partners.
The focus of the latest Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS) EMEA event is extending the Milestone open platform approach. This new approach is designed to enable the company’s partners to provide agile and easily adaptable video business solutions and allow them to move beyond traditional security.
Speaking to SSN Gulf at the event, held in Dubai earlier this months, Højland said: “Every interaction, that message [of the new approach] will be part of it. We talk a lot with our partners and have written communications and do business every day, there is a lot to be done in understanding it, and we don’t just tell about, but be it. Then we talk to people we don’t normally talk to in addition to our many thousand partners, and we have an enormous reach.”
The key strength of Milestone, which is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, is its community approach, according to Højland. “We really are partners first,” she said. There are a few things that are really hard to acquire – that’s a big partner base.” Another key focus is the company’s belief in collaboration, she said: “It’s not ‘I’ve built this, can you sell it to her,’ it’s ‘can we do this together?’”
She added that integration was also of paramount importance and a major asset of the company’s approach: “We are really good at building technology that glues all the pieces together. The tech guys would say something about high performance recording, and we are good at that too, but because we put in our piece of software, all the others can work together, that is really our core competence. Those two together gives a position that is really hard to match.”
The Gulf is a key market for Milestone, as one of the biggest markets for video security software, she said.
Visitors to MIPS EMEA had the opportunity to view exhibits by 35 of Milestone’s partners and network with organisations from throughout the video management software (VMS) community.
During the event, which was opened by Danish ambassador to the UAE and Qatar, Merete Juhl, visitors heard about future trends within the industry in a series of keynote speeches by Milestone’s leadership team.
The company also announced the introduction of R2, the second product update for XProtect 2017, which includes a recording server performance of 3GB per/s and security enhancements to protect video management systems, which are increasingly business critical from cybersecurity interference.
The event included the showcase of Milestone’s partners’ integrations and add-ons with X Protect, including advanced infrastructure solutions and VMS devices. Including the EMEA event, more than 1,000 participants have so far taken part in Milestone community days worldwide,
