18 Sep 2013
Milestone Systems, the open platform company in IP video management software (VMS), announces the next versions of its professional line of products: XProtect® Essential 2013, XProtect® Express 2013, XProtect® Professional 2013 and XProtect® Enterprise 2013. The products’ new features will further empower Milestone distributors, resellers and end-users to do more by embracing new capabilities and enabling more business opportunities.  

The new enhancements in the product line will make customers more productive, more cost-efficient, and more responsive. XProtect Professional 2013 provides security operators with a graphical overview of the entire installation from a single interface, empowering them to react quickly to incidents and efficiently manage alarms. The Alarm Manager ensures users are notified when unwanted behaviours occur.

With this release customers get the power of choice with updated user interface clients - XProtect® Smart Client, XProtect® Web Client and Milestone Mobile – each available in 26 languages. Users can quickly identify trouble areas by accessing video from various locations, including mobile devices.

The new product offerings are designed to simplify initial deployments of XProtect® and to enable users at different skill levels to effortlessly set up a Milestone IP video solution. This helps distributors to broaden the offerings of XProtect so the benefits of IP video surveillance are available to a more varied reseller audience.

“Deploying an IP video management solution can be a daunting and time consuming task. With the increased focus on cost efficiency and time optimisation, system installers can’t afford to spend time on systems that are hard to learn and difficult to use. As a result, Milestone is re-defining the process of installing, configuring and using IP video, with the purpose to shorten the complete deployment procedure and make it easy for users at all levels,” states Janne Jakobsen, VP Business Unit Professional Products, Milestone Systems.

• Easy to sell with a brand-new Product Sales Kit for partners
• Easy to deploy: automatic camera discovery and auto configuration wizard
• Easy to maintain with the all-new Customer Dashboard online service tool

XProtect Professional 2013’s new deployment process is guided by automatic set-up wizards that make it extremely easy to install - even for resellers with limited IT skills. A camera discovery feature automatically detects and configures new cameras being added to an existing system. This enables users to easily expand their installation with a single mouse click.

The enhanced configuration procedure removes the challenges and decreases the time needed to initially deploy and set up the system. This gives installers more time for the rest of their business and helps integrators who primarily install analogue systems to feel comfortable working with Milestone XProtect VMS, even without IP network and IT skills.

XProtect Professional 2013 allows the addition of an unlimited number of Recording Servers. This means that resellers can now provide a cost-effective and easy way to scale out a mid-sized solution, opening up more business opportunities. The new product versions are further optimized through 64-bit Recording Servers allowing users to connect more cameras to the same server unit.

The Customer Dashboard is a new online system monitoring service that gives resellers real-time updates on the status of their customers’ installations. This is an efficient way to always know the system status of their customer sites so they can proactively take action in case of a technical incident with a system. Resellers can react quickly and solve an issue - even before it becomes a problem for the customer. Handling technical problems in a timely way decreases down time and ensures that important video is recorded.

This new value-added service from Milestone helps system integrators add extended value to their service agreements with customers because they are supported with a tool that provides constant visibility on the status of installations. Some common errors that are detected in the Customer Dashboard include: camera malfunction, running out of disk space, failed archive operation, error deleting archive and camera not recording. Errors are displayed as alarms and once an alarm is detected and handled, it can be marked as “in progress”; when the system error is fixed, it will automatically be removed.

No setup is required to use the Customer Dashboard - it works automatically once the functionality is enabled in the XProtect Management Application and when the system is online. Click here to view a video about the Customer Dashboard.

XProtect® Essential 2013, XProtect® Express 2013, XProtect® Professional 2013 and XProtect® Enterprise 2013 will be available on October 7. See product demonstrations at the ASIS International trade show in Chicago September 24-26 at the Milestone booth 2223.