With more than 500 solution partners, integrators and end user clients gathered at the Walking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., Milestone Systems unveiled several strategic and solutions initiatives at its 11th annual Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS 2016), which as company CEO and President Lars Thinggaard put it, “are designed to introduce non-linear disruption to the security community.”
Milestone, an open platform technology vendor that plays in the IP video management space and is regarded as a pioneer in advanced video surveillance software, pushed the notion to its audience that solutions are now the product of the future, and that combined solutions and collaborative efforts can ensure heightened security and enhance situational awareness. The new business roadmap Milestone has embarked upon with its partners and customers promises to promote advice sharing on future solutions, services, and appliances.
Developer resources will be boosted to further ensure that all partners developing XProtect add-ons meet the highest standards for reliability, openness, security, and dependability. Ease of developing solutions with XProtect interoperability will be accelerated through educational and advisory services. Milestone will also allocate additional marketing resources to increase emphasis on these add-ons for existing and new channel partners and customers.
“We have reached a defining moment in our security and risk ecosystem that requires us to set the agenda and change the rules,” Thinggaard exhorted.
He stressed that 2016 will see Milestone take the next step in partner evolution with its “Partner Community Program”, which calls for several bold initiatives like:
- Creating an Advisory Board with partners and customers on roadmap prioritization
- Establishing a developer forum to strengthen the developer experience
- Enhancing the SDK design and developing more documentation of the API
- Expanding solution certifications to bolster reliability and ensure uniform quality
- Building an online Milestone marketplace for partners to promote and sell their solutions
- Introducing co-marketing programs to strengthen commercial collaboration
Creating the one and open community concept allows Milestone to maximize the value proposition for its video management solutions and leverage solution innovation among its technology partners. In 2015, Milestone saw a 30 percent rise in partner-programmed XProtect add-ons when the monthly downloads of the Milestone Software Development Kit (SDK) doubled in one year. This signals the massive interest for developing XProtect add-ons by the Milestone developer partner community who are responding to customer needs.
“The ability work within our open platform helps us accelerate growth and expand business opportunities together. We look upon this roadmap as a business enabler. It is our task to drive collaboration within the community,” added Thinggaard. “We will grow business with our partners and our partners will, in turn, grow their business within their own ecosystems.”
