Bosch and Milestone Intensify their Efforts for High Level Integration

About a year ago Bosch Security Systems and Milestone Systems announced their strengthened partnership to move their business to a new level of interoperability. Through their respective partner programs, Bosch and Milestone focus on technical, sales and marketing collaboration to deliver quality integration solutions to the market. GIT SECURITY had the opportunity to follow-up the interview we did last year, now talking to Thomas Lausten, Milestone's Vice President EMEA, and Johan Jubbega, Senior Vice President and Maarten Wings, Product Management Group Leader, at Bosch Security Systems

GIT SECURITY.com: Before we start talking about integration, we need to ask: Does the acquisition of Milestone by Canon influence your cooperation?

Thomas Lausten: As our CEO Lars Thinggaard stated after the acquisition, this move will have no impact on our approach to be open to any camera vendor in the market. There will be no change in our business model. We have a long-standing relationship with Canon as one of our camera partners just as we do with Bosch, and Milestone's support of the other 100+ camera manufacturers we work with will stay in force. Canon confirms that they will respect the confidentiality of our partner relationships as a cornerstone in our continued success.

Johan Jubbega: We trust that the acquisition of Milestone by Canon has no negative impact on our collaboration and we have no doubt that Milestone will take the right steps to safeguard the integrity of all their partner relationships.

As I understand it, the cooperation started with the seamless integration of Bosch IP video devices within Milestone XProtect software. It looks like you did not stop at this level?

Thomas Lausten: We were aiming on a higher level from the beginning of our cooperation. The next steps we took were to support tamper and motion detection, H.264 compression and multi-streaming of Bosch cameras. Then we were focused on integrating video analytics functionalities.

Johan Jubbega: As a result, we have bundled a series of video analytics functionalities for our cameras and offer them fully integrated with XProtect. Through this we provide superior intelligence and analytics at the edge, highest quality of relevant video images in challenging environments and most efficient bitrates, which allows for lower storage requirements versus most other solutions. Through this strengthened partnership with Milestone we can offer more unique and cutting-edge features and products for customers, offering them new integration possibilities.

What is your experience when you work together in the projects with customers?

Thomas Lausten: Bosch is a key partner for us in the whole EMEA region and elsewhere. Our experts and the project workers at Bosch are in a daily exchange of expertise during ongoing projects. They help each other when new project challenges occur, consult each other and develop solutions together with the customers.

Johan Jubbega: Our experience is that the results of the project cooperation and the solutions developed in one project can be used for future projects and the development of new hardware and software components. To summarize, a cooperation that has started on a strategic level is now an essential part of our project work and our product development.

What are the main synergies for both ­Milestone and Bosch?

Johan Jubbega: For us, partnerships like this one help us to extend our ecosystem and provide an opportunity for our customers to fully embrace and utilize the value-add that Bosch offers. The integration with software partners is crucial to be able to deliver the full potential of the Bosch value proposition to our customers. With the cooperation we become an even stronger solution provider.

Thomas Lausten: For Milestone, the partnership with Bosch opens new markets as we cooperate in a lot of big projects in areas and countries such as the Middle East, Russia and markets, like Africa. In a lot of these markets Bosch has people on the ground that pro-actively approach potential clients and who are involved in the project business. In the Middle East, for example, we see a growing success for our products directly related to the cooperation with Bosch.

What are the next steps?

Johan Jubbega: We are extending our support tools now that we have proven installations on all levels together - this includes training, co-eventing, technical documentation and after sales service.

Thomas Lausten: With the cooperation very well established the focus has moved to consistent work in the daily business. Out of this daily work we get a lot of new ideas for the further development of our offerings. So the projects and the demands for value added service form our roadmap for the future.

Maarten Wings: We have been asked, for example, about access control integration and the integration of video equipment in several projects. A clear signal from the market is the need to make this integration as easy as possible. The newly introduced access control & video solution from Bosch and Milestone is our answer to this customer requirement. Integrated security management is made fully accessible through Milestones XProtect which interfaces with the Bosch rugged enterprise access control hardware. For the security operator there is just one single interface to operate. Extended features like person administration and badge design are included as well, offering a full end-to-end solution.

Is there a good chance that access control, fire alarm and intrusion detection devices will be seamlessly integrated into management systems in the future?

Johan Jubbega: There is good progress as far as access control is concerned. This also supports our position as a solution provider. And this is a customer need we see extending beyond multiple domains. For example, the integration of fire detection components is not that easy as different regulations in many EMEA countries complicates things. The integration of intrusion detection on a basic level works well but there is work to be done for a deeper integration. In summary, we are making good progress in offering integrated security to large projects, where we already have vast experience, now also with a Milestone platform.

Thomas Lausten: We do not have a an exact schedue for the integration of fire alarm and intrusion detection devices but through the project work we make good progress. The level of integration in the future will be determined by the specific demand in the vertical markets and the different regions. There are vertical markets like hotels, transportation and hospitals with a demand for deeper integration and there are regions like the Middle East where the depth of integration will be higher than in other regions due to project complexity.

Maarten Wings: We are flexible enough to react to the specific demands and have already realized projects with a very high level of integration including video management, car park management, visitor management, intrusion detection, a modern elevator control system. And even a system to design visitor badges is included.