Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is Milestone Systems?

Milestone Systems is a name familiar to many in the video management industry. The company, a leading provider of open platform video management system (VMS) solutions, continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in video surveillance, security, and data analytics.

At the centre of its offerings is Milestone XProtect, a robust platform that enables organisations of all sizes to manage, analyse and integrate video feeds across devices and locations. "Milestone is an industry leader in open platform VMS solutions," explained Jordan Cullis, Director of Asia Pacific Sales at Milestone Systems, during a recent interview. "Our mantra is to be an open platform leader – to make sure that our customers have options, the ability to upgrade at their own speed and pace, and most importantly, are never going to get locked out of the market in terms of technology and development."

This flexible ethos has become central to Milestone's ongoing developments, especially as security managers and IT professionals grapple with evolving industry demands, from cloud computing to artificial intelligence.

The last 18 months have seen swift changes in Milestone's back-end systems, positioning the company for the "off-prem" - that is, off-premises - revolution. As Cullis described it, this shift represents a critical leap forward for the industry. "We're seeing a fairly significant uptake in technology enhancement that allows us to go off-prem, which is a really huge step for our industry because there've been a lot of attempts over the years - most of them have been relatively unsuccessful," he said. "It's about actually pulling our solutions down into components so that we can place them where we need to…on-prem, off-prem, or a hybrid of both."

Milestone releases three major product updates each year, ensuring a rapid pace of innovation. Cullis is particularly excited about the integration of artificial intelligence and advanced metadata search features. "Most recently, we've seen some really exciting stuff in video management, particularly around the uses in artificial intelligence—metadata search capabilities around understanding what we're looking at on a screen in a more seamless way," he said. "Historically, we saw our customers and the industry as a whole scrubbing through hours upon hours of video. When in fact, what we really just need to be doing is saying, 'I'm looking for a red car heading southbound' or 'I'm looking for somebody moving at a certain speed' or, you know, a little bit of metadata that's already in that video they've captured."

These improvements mean less grunt work for security staff and faster, smarter searches. "Bringing it to a central search platform gives us the ability to be a little more seamless around the way we investigate that video and use the data that we've already captured," Cullis added.

Beyond technological upgrades, protecting data and video streams from cyber attacks is now a top priority. "The thing that's front and centre of almost everybody's minds right now is cyber security and IT security holistically," Cullis said. He pointed out that Milestone has dedicated significant engineering resources to security, focusing on everything from public key infrastructure (PKI) and two-factor authentication (2FA) to FIPS compliance and beyond. "It's something that's definitely an ongoing mission, and I think it's an ongoing mission by the entire industry, but Milestone certainly has a number of key personnel working specifically on that today."

Indeed, demand for flexible, secure, and analytics-driven video management solutions is coming from across sectors. The impacts of COVID-19, which have changed working patterns and security needs, are also shaping product development. "As we see companies – particularly in these COVID times – that working from home changes, that's evolving every day," Cullis said. "We're seeing different needs emerging as well, even around the video surveillance and the security that we see in street surveillance, in law enforcement agencies, in education facilities. All of these things are changing very rapidly."

In the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) market, Milestone has a growing presence, with around 17 staff, mostly in Melbourne, but also spread across Queensland, New South Wales, and New Zealand, where partners play a vital role. "There's a sort of a range of personnel here in the ANZ market, from your sales and business development people right through to a very, very strong and highly regarded support mechanism," Cullis noted. He underscored that superior support is a key differentiator for Milestone Systems. "When organisations partner with Milestone, the response is that they don't get better service anywhere in the world from any organisation. We really do stand very closely behind our customers and with our partners to make sure that their deployments not only are successful, but truly meet all of the business needs that they have."

Looking ahead, Milestone's focus is tightly aligned with industry demands and customer needs. The development teams are "laser focused" on integrating cloud environments, central search capability and sophisticated analytics, all while maintaining the highest levels of security. This approach, says Cullis, ensures Milestone Solutions remain as relevant tomorrow as they are today.

Asked how partners and enterprise end users can engage with the company, Cullis kept it simple: "Obviously contact the local Milestone office. That can all be found very easily on Google," he said.

For Jordan Cullis and Milestone Systems, the mission is clear. "We really do stand very closely behind our customers and with our partners to make sure that their deployments…truly meet all of the business needs that they have," he said.