Milestone New "+" Claims To "Conquer The Mid-Market"

(I am VP Engineering for IPConfigure)

Moving complementary product lines to a single code base is a no-brainer, and likely a nice piece of technical debt from which Milestone has unburdened themselves.

I'm curious how others are seeing "the mid-market," though.  For folks like Milestone, it's clearly in their best interest to define the space in the terms that are most favorable to them: their impressive feature set (and relatively heavy .NET Microsoft software stack).

From a personal perspective, I see coming at the mid-market from the other side -- think driving down software and hardware costs with things like embedded Linux servers, mobile web clients, and simplified system administration.  There's more to "mid-market" than yesterday's enterprise systems at reduced cost.

Besides the "mid-market" aspect, perhaps my comment if off-topic; however, how does Genetec's Security Center Compact Edition generally stack up with this latest "Professional+" offering from Milestone?

I think its i good move from milestone into bringing products for mid-market which for our market is very essential & needed. ive been struggling with my clients for purchasing milestone because of its prices & complexity to understand its concept. 

But also i think this announcement of changes is too late because the market specially in cctv is quickly rising & milestone should have made these changes sooner to conquer the market. well we will then have to see how milestone now will be going through this year & years to come!

No EOL Planned For Express/Professional

I would verry much dare to doubt that. Sure, if is was Milestone i would say the same but i just don't believe it. My guess is somewhere next year we'll have anoher opt-in campaign for users with Express/Professional  without Care Plus to move over to the + versions.

i agree with Tasneem, this should have hapened 10 years ago. On the other hand, better late than never i gues? :-)

One thing that folks with existing installations of the original code base need to keep in mind is how the archiving process works.

The original code base worked best when the Archive target was on the same drive letter as the LiveDB, because it did not have to actually move the data.

Assuming the newer code base uses that same 'Expert/Corporate' archiving process, data WILL get moved, which will then require two separate drive letter targets for the best performance.   If one keeps the same drive letter as the older code used, there will be a performance hit to be aware of and adjust the system to accommodate.

As someone who is very familiar with the topic but is not directly involved or aware of anything privileged, I can tell you that a single code base was a desire they had almost from the time that the Corporate platform was released, so this doesn't surprise me at all.  What did surprise me was how long it took to happen, but then it made me wonder...

Is the reason it took so long more intentional in their hopes to make it as easy as possible to acquire / steal all those OnSSI customers that are still using the old code base?  My understanding is that there are still a lot of them out there, so this, to me, would make perfect sense...in fact, it's the only thing that makes sense, IMHO.

As far as how they'll fare in the mid-market, I'm sure it'll be fine, though there will be many who still feel it might be too heavy or complex for smaller applications when compared to alternative products.  That's more of a dealer issue, though, as it seems to be a fairly invisible change to the end users except for some new features.  Those already selling Milestone in this market now have more features to compete with at a higher price point.

While I don't necessarily think this will drive tons of new business for Milestone, I do think it makes total sense from an engineering and resource standpoint.

This article missed a huge feature upgrade.  Ignoring the old code base for Express and Professional, Milestone now supports Active Directory integration and mapping on all products.  This includes the free version.  If a single site install has 8 or fewer cameras and doesn't need integration, then the free version is a really great option.

The lower tier products are way more attractive now.  Making them all full featured with limitations only on camera counts, multi-server, fail-overs, or multi-management servers is a great change.  You use to have to compare features vs cost to figure out which version to use.  Now, you just need to know your approximate camera count and if it should be multi-site.

The downside for some will be the added level of difficulty if not familiar with the corporate code base.

Milestone confirmed "We're Retiring XProtect Express and XProtect Professional" by June 2024. Their announcement notes that Express and Professional will continue to be sold until June 2022.

Additionally, they will support both in "Maintenance Mode" until June 2024, which means:

Customers will continue to get security patches and bug fixes during the five-year maintenance period if a severe or catastrophic issue is identified.

The document also advises customers that Express+/Professional+ have more features and new development support.

Just don't expect to "Lock or Tag" video for a later date with the + versions.