Milestone XProtect Enterprise Version 8 Reviewed

JH
John Honovich
•Published Sep 15, 2011 00:00 AM
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In Summer 2011, Milestone released a major enhancement, Version 8 [link no longer available] to their XProtect Enterprise VMS version. Enterprise is positioned by Milestone as the second highest of their 5 VMS versions [link no longer available].

In this note, we examine what is new in Version 8 and how these advances changes Enterprise positioning to Milestone's other VMSes and to third party VMSes such as Exacq and Genetec.

Summary

Enterprise Version 8 consists mostly of features already existing in Milestone's highest end version (Corporate) as well as mid tier versions of their professional level competitors. As such, this release is not a breakthrough but does catch Milestone up in some areas and shift the positioning between Milestone's offerings.

Here are the 5 additions we see have the most impact:

  • Alarm management - integrates a pane within their client to allow users to view alarms, associated video, etc (see sample image of feature [link no longer available]). This feature is available in nearly every other professional VMS.
  • Camera Navigation - allows operator to click on buttons overlayed on video to simplify tracking suspects (see sample image of feature [link no longer available]). This is a feature available on very few systems (most notably Genetec).
  • Maps - integrates a pane with panes inside the client (see sample image of feature [link no longer available]). This feature is available in nearly every other professional VMS.
  • Dual streaming support - useful for video analytics and for viewing at different resolutions than recording, etc. This feature is available in some other VMSes.
  • New exported video player that has the same layout as Milestone's client. We found the previous player to be very clunky and hard to use.

Positioning

Compared to other VMSes, Milestone has resolved some significant deficiencies that should eliminate some competitive weaknesses.

In September 2011, Milestone also announced enhancements to their lower end VMS versions and the introduction of another VMS version positioned beneath Enterprise. These versions improve Milestone's positioning but we still see a number of functional limitations compared to competitors. Review our update on Milestone's Fall 2011 VMS additions for details.

Finally, compared to the highest end Milestone version, Corporate, the new version of Enterprise closes the gap somewhat, making it easier to choose Enterprise. However, Corporate still has a number of important advantages over Enterprise, specifically: centralized management, rules, redundancy, multicast, network video distribution, etc. For a detailed feature by feature version comparison, see the XProtect Comparison Chart [link no longer available].