Advice On Pelco For Enterprise Deployment

so with out giving to much info away just yet I have a question but before i ask it some context first...

I have been asked (mandated) to be a consultant for some technical evaluation on an upcoming project later this year in the several million dollar range. I haven't worked with pelco since they decided to stay analog while every one was going IP. Now while they used to be awesome back in the day I have heard nothing good about them since IP cameras be came the standard for enterprise level. I have to be honest and impartial on my "advice" but i dont want to give away to many details as other bids for this job are going on as well.

My question is can pelco really offer an "enterprise level" solution?

the specs: almost 1500 cameras which over half would have been already installed and to be integrated into a single VMS with Active Directory compatibility, scalable storage, and a decent camera line. also can they integrate existing Axis and Panasonic cameras we have (all IP).

Now I am not interested in what would be best for this project but can Pelco do it. I have heard nothing good about their software and my experience with "digital sentry" is less than stellar even for the time it came out. they are offering video expert or "endura?" for VMS. I know video expert is new has any one used it yet?

not looking for pelco bashing just some honest opinions on thier IP line. I have found some infomation here on IPVM. (worst camera manufac. 2016) but looking for more info, thanks in advance.

On the VMS side, their plan is clearly to migrate everything to VideoXpert (see: Pelco's New VMS - VideoXpert). As for hearing 'nothing good about their software', I think Pelco saw the problems, ergo the new platform.

We have been planning to test VideoXpert but were waiting for 1.8, which is now available. We'll start testing it shortly.

The big thing with any new VMS is making sure (1) features are there (it's easy for many features to be missing at first and (2) scalability is solid. Since you have 1000+ cameras, both are likely very important.

From interacting with them, our impression is that they are working diligently on improving things, though there are certainly a lot of improvements needed.