At the recently concluded Milestone Partner Summit (MIPS) Dubai, Milestone shared their ambition to double their revenue over the next five years. To achieve this, Milestone reiterated their commitment to “building the new next” and to “never fly solo.”
At the recently concluded Milestone Partner Summit (MIPS 2022) in Dubai, Milestone shared their ambition to more than double their revenue over the next five years. To achieve this, Milestone reiterated their commitment to “Building the New Next” and to “Never Fly Solo.”
Milestone is currently the number one VMS vendor in APAC and EMEA and has plans to defend this position and strengthen their regional presence. Strong channel partnerships will be key to this and APAC is definitely one of the regions Milestone has been scaling up operations in: with a 40% personnel expansion even during Covid, a new site and office in Brisbane, full local coverage of India as well as a planned revamp of experience centers in Singapore and Australia.
Speaking to asmag.com at the event, Malou Toft, VP of APAC at Milestone Systems, shared that Milestone sees APAC as a rapidly growing market, as evidenced by the number of greenfield projects, smart cities and smart buildings in development. As use cases continue to evolve, Milestone plans to tap into these new avenues of growth with new product offerings – Milestone Kite (Milestone’s first cloud offering) and two industry-specific solutions for healthcare and hospitality.
“It is always good to be part of a growing industry. We are moving beyond the traditional Video Management Software (VMS) and diversifying our offerings into the Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) and analytics space because we want to tap into the full length of the addressable market that's out there for us. That diversification will give us that extra edge in terms of what we offer and the customers that we serve. So, this is a very exciting time and I know that in this region, this is really something that we can go out there and do well,” said Toft.
Toft also shared some Milestone VMS use cases beyond security in APAC. One was for a Queensland private hospital where the VMS platform was integrated with the access control and building system. When the VMS identifies a patient being wheeled to surgery, it disables the lift call buttons, allowing the patient to reach the operating theater on the upper floors with minimal delay. There are also other use cases in transportation where asset tracking of shipping containers using AI, improved the efficiency of port operations and led to significant savings in both time and cost.
Milestone is working closely with channel partners, leveraging their knowledge and expertise to develop the right solutions for APAC – a complex region with multiple languages and varying market maturity. “We are working on strengthening our local presence with our local teams, but at the same time have industry experts that work a little bit more region-wide. So, we have both horizontal and vertical coverage of customers and go-to-market models,” said Toft.
So, what can APAC partners expect from Milestone in the coming year?
“Meeting our customers with relevant local content will of course be very much on the agenda next year. More engagement with consultants and end users in specific industries, and channel partners, both from the system integration and distribution side,” said Toft.
“The second part is lead generation. Building the foundation of the marketing engine will drive more 1-to-1 marketing engagements with decision makers to drive that funnel managed by Milestone in a much bigger way than what we've done so far. We are still going to rely a lot on our relationship building both from the channel and from what we can drive, but we are also going to do a bit more systematic work in terms of digitizing our own marketing efforts,” added Toft.
Partnership at the core of the Milestone platform
One point Toft emphasized on during the talk was the importance of working with the right partners. “We are at the crossroads where the need for specialization within video technology is apparent. Not everyone can deploy at a very large-scale enterprise level. So, we need to make sure the partners commit, really specialize and build that expertise within verticals or for more generic use cases,” said Toft.
“We need to make sure to work with the right partners so that end customers will get that service appropriate for a Milestone installation. We’re choosing to have more exclusivity and work closely with our top partners,” added Toft.
This partnership community was highlighted at the Tech Expo during MIPS Dubai which featured solutions in security (and beyond security) built on the Milestone open VMS platform. This included applications for facial recognition, license plate recognition software, smart building and city solutions, a surveillance bridge (connecting storage to the cloud) and physical security information management (PSIM) platforms.
One notable partnership highlighted at the event was the partnership between Azena and VIVOTEK who demonstrated an AI box that can help make “dumb” security devices smart.
“Devices are becoming more intelligent due to new advancements in system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology which is driving the use of AI functions such as facial recognition, people tracking and counting, occupancy monitoring and more. However, many clients are limited by existing legacy video installations,” said Maico Chiang, Regional Sales Manager at VIVOTEK. “With our AI Box, clients can download AI apps from the Azena application store and apply it to any IP camera footage, thus enabling analytics and AI on the edge.”
Azena also showcased its application store with over 100 AI video analytics apps from more than 30 specialized AI development partners at the event. “These apps are ready to be installed on 15 camera devices from six camera brands, such as VIVOTEK, Bosch or BST and there are many of these apps that can be integrated to Milestone XProtect through a no-code integration wizard from Azena. Two of these integrations were also shown live at the booth, one for a fire and smoke detection app and one for a PPE detection app. Alarms generated by these apps fed directly into XProtect to help real-time situational awareness and allow for fast response as well as automated alerting,” said Fabio Marti, VP of Marketing at Azena.
Speaking on their partnership with Milestone which has laid the development of Azena’s open platform for smart cameras, many of which are integrated with Milestone XProtect, Marti shared; “Milestone’s experience and vast network in the security market have been instrumental for this journey, as well as in connecting with innovative partners and end-users that want to leverage Azena’s AI analytics offering.”