Security Solutions Media spoke to Ash Ramanayake, Country Manager for Oceania at Milestone Systems during the VMS vendor’s headline event on the Gold Coast recently.
One particular area of focus for Milestone at present is with local and regional councils, with the company’s VMS platform XProtect being deployed for a growing range of uses that go beyond the traditional deployments, and add extra value to a network of cameras and other edge devices.
In a sense, as Ramanayake explains, councils are able to move their security infrastructure from being a passive, capital expense to being a business asset that provides extended value to the council.
“Typically, a council will come up against budget constraints if their plan is based just around visibility, but when we move the conversation to say, curbing vandalism, auditing the volume of cars on freeways, monitoring flood levels in infrastructure and so forth, that is the sweet spot. In that sense they are interested in a less traditional approach but more interested in the business intelligence side of what we can offer them.”
This trend is having an impact on the decision-makers’ ability to find value for system upgrades, and the all-important task of ‘selling’ that concept to c-suite and the board.
The biggest trends coming out of Milestone’s event and general feedback from the trade focuses on data, and what it can show the customer. Ramanayake explains that the exploration of data use is very widespread, and not confined to one or two industry sectors.
“Better business outcomes through data is a focal point, and looking at how we process that data. Selling solutions that access and process data is becoming a big part of our strategy. As an open platform, Milestone XProtect is able to integrate with a huge array of services so we are very well placed to help with those data-powered outcomes.”
“We are finding that people respond to discussions around data use and the ability to push security out of the cost-centre and away to it being a business driver. For example, a buyer can now go to his or her boss and instead of asking for say, $500,000 for infrastructure they can say: ‘I can save you $3million and it will only cost you $500,000.”
Another area of the event was based around solutions specific to the healthcare sector. The pure focus of Milestone’s role here is on enablement, rather than surveillance, and the duty of care that a system can help to produce using ingested data.
Milestone’s newest addition, XProtect Hospital Assist, presents a myriad of ways that a camera network can assist with helping better patient outcomes and increasing that duty of care, from patient awareness through to privacy.
Milestone has also increased its headcount in the region, and restructured the team to respond better to current trends and demand.
There are now 24 staff based around the South Pacific region, which has increased from a team of 8 barely five years ago.
New resources include tech support, pre sales, and inside channel managers whose role is to build a network of entry level customers which will over time be nurtured to evolve into expanded business for Milestone.
“We will continue to grow, especially in terms of our customer-facing staff and support at the back-end. It is about finding the balance between volume and partner engagement based on the resources we have on hand,” explains Ramanayake.
Regarding the ASIAL event and beyond, Milestone is working on showcasing several new players and tech partners including the ‘phenomenal’ work that has been done by Gallagher to integrate with Milestone XProtect. Other integrations will include new radar cameras from Axis Communications and quite a few integrations with iPRO cameras featuring AI-powered functionality.
“We will showcase the abilities of all edge devices at the stall, and focus on the capabilities of each. Five years ago Milestone could integrate with around 5000 products – that figure is now more than 13,000,” Ramanayake concludes.
