Milestone Alleges [Now Removed], Qognify Denies VMS "Running Out Of Support"

When selling people on buzzwords isn't enough you can always resort to starting rumors about your competitors.

Milestone is better than this kind of petty stuff, IMO. This makes them look like a creepy ex-girlfriend, stalking an ex and throwing stones.

I think this is a brilliant move by Milestone!  In some agreement somewhere, there is probably a clause which states that Milestone will support the recording engine of OnSSI for a "limited time"; i.e. a few years following the end of their OEM agreement.  Whilst Qognify will likely do their best to support the product, ultimately the question lies into whether they have access to the source code to update if an issue occurs.  Only Milestone & OnSSI know the answer here, but my guess is Milestone is playing on this and offering a sweetheart of a deal to switch customers from an older platform to something that will be supported long-term.  

We all know the challenges of swapping out a VMS platform, Milestone is now making it cost effective.

I think it is quite telling if existing OnSSI customers are receiving solicitations/discounts from Q to convert over to their other VMS offerings it will be a confirmation of OnSSI's lack of a future.

What does IPVM expect Steve Shine to say?

You're not going to get : "Yeah, we're building a Potemkin village of support for our aging platform, so that we can keep milking existing customers until we have something tolerable, or we can offload this chaotic mess to a camera manufacturer with a lot of money and no brains".

It's not about "intent" - as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sure Qognify "intends" to support 5 different VMS's, but how well can you really do it? Milestone had 2 platforms for the longest time (Enterprise and Corporate), but since they're not incompetent fools, they obviously worked towards supporting just one platform. They have 100+ devs, their sister is Axis (just across the bridge), they have Canon backing them, and making a shitload of $$$. They spun out Arcules into a separate company, and only share what makes sense.

Steve says that they're already getting synergistic effects on integration with 3rd party gateway integrations - that's good. But go attend a MIPS conference please. 3rd parties will do the work to integrate their stuff with Milestone themselves. Pray tell what 3rd party company wakes up and says : Let me spend a huge amount of time and effort to support the 3 different platforms at Qognify, such that I can leverage their installed base vs. doing the same on Milestone, Avigilon, Genetec etc?

So, forget about the bullshit "intent", and do the math.

That said, I'm sure that Milestones lawyers went over their statement many times to get as close to the line as possible. They split that offer and warning/advice into two different paragraphs, such that you could argue that Milestone is just making a general statement, and not making a baseless and incorrect claim about Qognifys ability or intent.

I can't believe Milestone is the only company making this suggestion, but perhaps they're the only ones with the balls to say it publicly.

Who wants to bet that the account manager at Battery Ventures is being asked why he's betting on this mess vs. Verkada?

I think that the use of the word 'is' here is the only thing I have any issue with - and also leads me to believe that legal never saw this before it was printed.

Using 'is' makes a direct statement about Q (even though they separate the paragraphs) that can - and has been - directly refuted.

imo, this is exactly the kind of thing that legal generally would never let you do if they are consulted.

If, instead, they used 'might (or might be)' in its place I think it's legit.... 

Update: 

Milestone Removes

Milestone has issued a new version of the flyer with the 'running out of support' claim removed, replaced by a generic Milestone is 'world class' message:

Qognify offers support?

Their lack of support have caused many large companies to look elsewhere for VMS/PSIM solutions.