Milestone aggregates analytics

COPENHAGEN--Video management software maker Milestone Systems announced on Sept. 1 a new open platform solution, XProtect Analytics 2.0, which it said integrates video analytics tools from different manufacturers into one user interface. This step comes in anticipation that "within the next three to five years, video analytics will be as prevalent in video surveillance solutions as motion detection is today," said Eric Fullerton, chief marketing and sales officer for Milestone. However, different analytics makers have different strengths and weaknesses, he said, and it will be important for the reduction of false alarms, especially, that end users employ more than one analytics software as part of their video surveillance systems. "It's a myth," he said, referring to the trend toward putting analytics on the edge, on cameras or encoders, "to think that you're going to reduce what you send back over the Ethernet. You're going to need to have the full recording." But, he said, those analytics are great for creating metadata and tagging video as it's streamed back. So, he expects end users will eventually have a combination of analytics at the edge and server-based analytics, combining any number of capabilities--facial recognition, directional analytics, object left behind, etc.--into one solution. And Milestone will provide the way to aggregate all those capabilities into one interface. What of the argument that end users can barely afford analytics from one company, not to mention a number of different vendors? "It's not a question of whether they can pay for it or not," said Milestone channel marketing manager Mark Wilson. "It's whether they're willing to pay for that lack of accuracy. There are people willing to pay whatever it costs, but people won't pay for no results." Milestone also believes analytics prices will drop rapidly as small companies try to achieve the scale needed to survive.