Martin McGrath, Sales Director, UK and Ireland at Milestone Systems discusses the company’s investment in the UK, new product offerings and what customers can expect to experience in the latest Concept Centre.
The UK and Europe have proven to be one of our key strategic markets, so opening a Concept Centre in London was a natural step.
We wanted to make it easy for customers and partners to come and see us and the Centre reinforces Milestone’s presence here in the UK.
I see the launch of the Centre important because it comes at a critical time for video security overall, with advances in AI and connected devices meaning more organisations are seeing video as a strategic business opportunity beyond security.
In fact, several of the latest additions to our product portfolio, such as Arcules, have strong interest in the UK.
So, being able to showcase that and other innovations in the Concept Centre is invaluable!
Milestone Concept Centres are designed as a place where our partners and end users can see the Milestone solutions in action.
It’s a way to learn how they address the challenges users face on a day-to-day basis.
Milestone’s full product portfolio will be on display, from our well-known XProtect video management software to our cloud offering, Arcules and analytics platform, BriefCam.
The Centre will also showcase selected tech partners, such as Axis, Bosch, Gallagher, Hanwha, Honeywell, i-PRO, ADI, Oprema, Zenitel and 2N.
Designed to be interactive, the Centre allows users to test and customise solutions based around XProtect, BriefCam and Arcules.
Visitors will be able to combine Milestone and partner solutions, so they can understand how the technology will work for them.
This experience goes beyond a demonstration, really immersing visitors in the technology.
Plus, there’ll be training available so end-users, partners, resellers and others can get familiar with products through practical presentations and hands-on demonstrations.
Customer requirements are changing and Arcules offers another way of securing premises through cloud and hybrid solutions.
Arcules is our cloud video offering, essentially video surveillance as a service, built for organisations that want the benefits of cloud without having to run servers and storage on site.
It’s designed to be simple to deploy, simple to manage and easy to scale across one site or dozens.
You log in through a browser or mobile app and you’ve got secure access to live and recorded video, searches, alerts and the day‑to‑day tools you need to run security across multiple locations.
A big part of the appeal in the UK is reducing the ‘kit in the comms room’ and the IT overhead.
With Arcules, updates are handled for you and the platform is hosted in cloud infrastructure that’s designed for resilience and security, so customers aren’t patching servers or worrying about keeping everything current and cyber-secure.
And importantly, it’s not an ‘either/or’ conversation.
Many customers want flexibility: Some systems stay on‑prem, some move to the cloud and they modernise over time.
That’s why we position Arcules as another option in the Milestone portfolio, a cloud solution that complements existing setups, rather than forcing a rip‑and‑replace.
Every video stream from a security camera is a potential goldmine of data and with BriefCam, organisations can unlock that intelligence in their existing systems.
So the interest in BriefCam has been significant as it creates team efficiencies, improves contextual awareness, boosts response times and can deliver business intelligence.
Interest in BriefCam began largely in the public sector, especially law enforcement and we’re now seeing increased adoption across sectors such as retail and large venues, particularly stadiums.
Interest has also been sparked in organisations and industries impacted by Martyn’s Law, as BriefCam can increase situational awareness and support capacity management through its people-counting features.
One of the biggest immediate values customers have had through BriefCam is being able to investigate events faster, filtering based on license plates, object categorisation, colour attributes and so on.
Hours of surveillance are condensed into a short overview, using patented VIDEO SYNOPSIS technology.
At Cumbria Constabulary, for example, BriefCam saved hours of investigation time on a kidnapping case, where the team had around 1200 hours of footage to sift through.
This task was reduced to under one hour and through savings like this the system paid for itself within the first two months of going live!
This is a really big year for Milestone, as we continue to transform the video security industry, most notably with Project Hafnia and additions across the entire product portfolio in the immediate future.
At the heart of our research and development is our commitment to handling video data with built-in compliance from the outset.
Our training data library is responsibly sourced, fully anonymised, tagged with over 300,000 categorisations using NVIDIA technology and completely traceable, using brighter AI’s anonymisation technology, which we are also making available directly to customers.
Project Hafnia is an ethically sourced, annotated video data library and developer tools that are designed to support and streamline the training and development of AI models.
Instead of spending time cleaning and curating video data, developers can use the ready-made Project Hafnia data safe in the knowledge that it has been carefully and ethically curated, anonymised and tagged.
It provides a traceable, high-quality, vast video data source that meets the various regulations required of data controllers and processors across Europe, the UK and beyond.
Alongside these innovations, Milestone will continue to engage closely with customers and partners.
In the UK, we will host a series of in-person events for end users, as well as channel and technology partners, offering hands-on access to the latest solutions and expert guidance through our London Concept Centre.
Regardless of the sector, Milestone’s portfolio is designed to meet a wide range of different customer needs.
The combined benefits of Milestone XProtect, BriefCam, Arcules and our ecosystem of more than 8,000 partners create a comprehensive suite that can be tailored to virtually any use case, organisation size, or industry.
We’re proud to offer this flexibility, whether a customer needs an on-premise solution, cloud-based, or desires a hybrid set-up.
We can deliver, without compromising on control, scalability or simplicity.
For installers and integrators, this flexibility opens up broader opportunities across different markets and customer types.
It allows them to design and deliver solutions that are closely aligned with each customer’s operational goals, compliance requirements and budget, recognising that no two deployments are ever the same.
It is an exciting time to be working in the industry and particularly within a pioneer like Milestone, which takes a responsible, people-first approach in everything it does.
Innovations like Project Hafnia pay testament to this, driving the industry forward with ethically sourced, high-quality, curated data.
In the UK and Ireland, the team has grown significantly over the years and I’m proud to work alongside a highly skilled and dedicated team.
As the team has expanded, so too have our specialisms and ability to support end-users, partners, resellers and more.
The launch of the new Concept Centre represents the commitment we have experienced from customers and partners over many years and the UK’s strategic significance to Milestone globally.
Listening to the market, it was clear that our customers and partners would benefit from access to the facilities the Concept Centre offers.
It is one of our key markets for Arcules in particular and a top-performing region for our whole portfolio.
I look forward to welcoming guests at the Centre and showing them how Milestone can help them!
This article was originally published in the May edition of Security Journal UK. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.
