Milestone Integration Platform Symposium Celebrates Winning through Partnership

At its annual MIPS conference Milestone System shared expertise, honored partners with awards and discussed innovation with a broad audience. Milestone held its 10th annual MIPS partner conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 24 to 26. It was their largest-ever gathering with close to 500 attendees and 50 exhibiting companies in the Technology Showcase that demonstrated integrated solutions for enhancing safety and optimizing business.

Over the last 10 years the industry has seen MIPS grow from a small manufacturer event to one of the most esteemed industry events of the year. The central theme of this year's event was 'Winning Together - The Power of Partnership". MIPS 2015, as in the previous years, was action-packed and filled exciting opportunities for Milestone's eco system partners and attendees. This year, more than before, the focus was on the importance of building powerful partnerships and the significance of the value-adding partner ecosystem. During the event, attendees heard from different speakers on how we will be directing efforts towards focusing even more on our partners and making 2015 a partner-focused year.

CEO Lars Thinggaard and CSMO Kenneth Petersen welcomed the distributors, system integrators, end users, software solution partners, camera manufacturers and storage providers to the event that took place at the Cosmopolitan Hotel's new concert venue called The Chelsea. Speakers, industry panelists and interactive breakout sessions highlighted how the Milestone VMS open platform enables ongoing innovation and efficiency.

Demonstrating Expertise
The Utah Transit Authority, hhgregg retail chain, Iberdrola power utilities management, a major metropolitan police force, and Hyatt Hotels presented the solutions that meet their security and business challenges. Each illustrated how the IP networked video systems built with the Milestone open platform are reliable, flexible, and scalable as their needs change and grow.

A lively industry panel discussion involved five leading camera manufacturers: Axis Communications, Arecont Vision, Bosch, Samsung Techwin and Sony. Top managers from these companies shared their opinions on the future of the industry and ideas on 4K expectations, recording at the edge, cloud technology progress and its potential impact.

Partners and Their Technology
The Technology Showcase included Milestone Partners exhibiting every kind of integration with the open platform VMS:

• Network camera manufacturers: Arecont Vision, Axis Communications, Bosch, Canon, Lilin, MicroPower Technologies, Panasonic, Pelco, Samsung Techwin, Sentry360, Sony, Vicon, Videotek and Vivotek;

• Server and storage providers: App-Techs, DDN, EMC, HP, IBM, Iomnis, Oracle Storagetek, Pivot3, Quantum, Razberi, Seneca, Spectra Logic, Veracity;

• Access control vendors: Axis Communications, Isonas, Keyscan and Open Options;

• Analytics and biometric solutions from Agent Vi, Ganetek, Ipsotek, Mango & Mate, NEC Corporation and VCA Technology;

• Perimeter scanners and GPS locators from Sick Sensor Intelligence, Optex and Savvux Technology/The Hawkeye Effect;

• Display, infrastructure, device and software applications from BriefCam, Moxa, RGB Spectrum and Snap;

• Wireless technology from Digital Barriers and Fluidmesh;

• Distribution and security service partners ADI, NMS, ScanSource and Synnex.

Award Night
"The constantly growing number of Milestone Solution Partners illustrates that winning through partnerships is the key to solid growth through the freedom of choice provided when doing business with our open platform," said Lars Thinggaard, President & CEO, Milestone Systems. "The multi-faceted expertise throughout our global ecosystem is enabling the industry to continually improve safety and security as well as efficiency in business operations."
Milestone Partner Awards were announced on the final night to celebrate stellar performance in sales, marketing and innovation for the year 2014:

• National Partner of the Year: Johnson Controls

• Distributor of the Year: Anixter

• Technology Partner of the Year: EMC

• Integration of the Year: Isonas

• Solution Partner of the Year: Sick

• Camera Manufacturer of the Year: Arecont Vision

• Regional Partner of the Year: Continental Computers/WLANmall

• Installation of the Year: Mainline Information Systems, WinStar Casino

The Chickasaw Nation WinStar World Casino and Resort installation is a 4,000 channel system at the customer's flagship location with more than 7,400 electronic games, 100 gaming tables and 50 poker tables - the largest casino in North America. The Milestone XProtect video management system is fully virtualized, utilizing two petabytes of storage with system fail over to ensure gaming regulations are met and zero downtime is achieved.

What's New in 2015?
In one of the keynote speaches Milestone's new CSMO, Kenneth Hune Petersen, who joined the Milestone team in 2014 unveiled the plans and strategies to work in better proximity with our partners to make the open platform an even bigger reality. There were additional breakout sessions, which provided an exclusive sneak peek into what Milestone has in store for the market for the rest of the year. MIPS 2015 saw a new and solution oriented series of technology-based breakout sessions being held.

Updates from Milestone's Research and Development and the latest products and tools in Milestone Husky NVR series were just some of the areas of emphasis in these sessions. The popular sleek network video recorders (NVRs), which come pre-installed with the Milestone VMS, are launched in April with significant increases in internal storage, enabling longer video retention and continuous high-resolution recordings. "We recognized the shift in the market for integrated NVR solutions," said Jay Shah, Global Business Development Director, Incubation and Ventures. "Our Milestone partners and customers asked us for more storage with the Milestone Husky Series and we will deliver."

All in all the attendees got a heads up on the near term possibilities for customer-centric solutions based on the open platform technology. But MIPS was not just about the products. The event also featured exciting new business initiatives and updates from the respective Milestone departments. The business track breakout sessions focused on support and auxiliary services, which are being introduced to help our partners take the open platform technology even further.