Milestone Systems announced on Monday that it has acquired Connex International, a Minneapolis, Minn.-based provider of surveillance training, certification and consulting services. Milestone was already a majority stakeholder in Connex from an initial investment in July 2010.
For years, Connex teams have set up, managed and performed Milestone channel partner training in many languages with proven success across all regions. In recent years, Connex has added rigorous certification testing and documentation of Milestone Solution Partner integrations with the XProtect platform, such as access control, analytics, geo-spatial positioning, video synopsis, 360-degree camera view de-warping, network video storage and more.
Milestone is now fully investing in these dedicated resources, supporting the need for continued education in the physical security sector to further enable the continued migration from analog to IP video technology.
"Our international ecosystem of competent distributors and resellers is key to the Milestone strategy for continued growth. To further accelerate, globalize and align our efforts to strengthen the training of this ecosystem, Milestone has decided to fully acquire and include Connex in the core of our business operations," Milestone President and CEO Lars Thinggaard said in a statement. "As a key component in our pursuit to serve the clients of the future, Milestone will continue to invest significant resources in the Milestone Knowledge Program and the teams driving our global training concepts to market. The full inclusion of Connex into Milestone is a testimony to this strategy. Their services support Milestone partners in delivering the most competitive, well-designed and high quality solutions in the industry."
The aim for the initial transition in Q4 of 2013 will be to continue the existing training operations while building out the global capacity including plans for launching self-paced online certification courses for channel partners. In addition to the Milestone Knowledge Program, the professional consulting services provided by Connex to key Milestone partners will be incorporated into Milestone's core business framework.
