Examining Video Analytic Management Test

Steve Hunt has published test results comparing Aimetis, Milestone and Verint as 'video analytics management' platforms.

Given the focus of this test, it's not surprising that Aimetis is ranked the highest (see his 1 page results for Aimetis, Milestone, and Verint).

The key here is that Hunt is focusing on 'video analytics management platforms.' On this very specific element, Aimetis is the only one of these 3 companies that deeply embeds (and uses only their own) analytics. By contrast, Milestone and Verint are general purpose systems that integrated video analytics over time.

Given this focus, it would be surprising for Aimetis not to get the highest ratings. However, it does raise a key question: Should a test of VMS systems be based on video analytics management?

It is on this point that Hunt makes a controversial claim:

customers' don't want video in order to record ... they want it to find out anomalous or malicious events and then respond to them ... milestone and verint do a poor job on this [slightly paraphrased as he was speaking extemporaneously, watch the video below at minute 9]

However, customers have voted with their purchases to the contrary of Hunt's statement. Vendors who focus on deep integration of analytics within their VMS have far smaller market share than general purpose VMS vendors (e.g., Aimetis and 3VR vs Milestone and Genetec, etc.).

Why this is the case is likely two fold:

• Analytics performance problems: Customers who really valued immediate notification of malicious events were turned off by performance problems
• Tradeoffs in developing video management and video analytic features: There's so much complexity in developing either of these two functionalities, that doing one hinders the development of the other. Most customers probably favored more complete video management capabilities, especially with concerns over analytics performance.

A test with more balanced assumptions on general video management as well as testing the performance of analytics would likely have a significantly different outcome.

At some point in the future as analytics mature, maybe the demand for deeper integration of analytics will increase. However, at that point, it's equally likely that the general purpose VMS providers will improve their integration.