Milestone XProtect VMS in Chicago

The open-platform VMS from a Copenhagen basement

Milestone Systems is proof that a video management platform can win by being open rather than owning the hardware. It was founded in 1998 in Copenhagen, Denmark, by two engineers — John Blem and Henrik Friborg Jacobsen — who reportedly started with about eleven thousand dollars and a basement. Their bet was that surveillance software should work with any camera, not just one manufacturer’s, and it paid off: their XProtect platform now runs in well over half a million installations worldwide. In 2014 Canon acquired the company, and it has operated as an independent Canon subsidiary ever since, crossing two billion Danish kroner in annual revenue.

XProtect, from two cameras to ten thousand

XProtect is a family, not a single product. It scales from a free entry-level version up through Professional, Expert, and Corporate tiers, so a two-camera shop and a thousand-camera enterprise can run the same software and grow between tiers without switching systems. That range is a big reason integrators standardize on it: learn one platform, deploy it everywhere.

Open platform: any camera, any integration

“Open platform” is the entire point of Milestone. XProtect supports thousands of camera models from hundreds of manufacturers through regularly updated device packs, so it’s the natural home for a site that runs mixed camera brands or refuses to be locked to one vendor. On top of that sits a large marketplace of third-party integrations — analytics, license-plate recognition, access control — that plug into XProtect rather than requiring a separate system. When a project needs video to talk to everything else, that openness is what gets Milestone specified.

Where XProtect actually earns its keep

For most Chicago businesses, a cloud or NVR setup is simpler and cheaper to run. XProtect earns its place in a narrower set of cases: a property that already owns a wall of mixed-brand cameras and doesn’t want to replace them, a campus spread across several buildings that needs one interface, or a site that has to fold in specific third-party analytics without a rip-and-replace. In those situations it’s often the cleanest way to unify everything — and it’s why an organization on XProtect tends to stay on it for a long time.

Where we fit with Milestone

A full enterprise XProtect design is typically a large-integrator job, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Where we’re useful is the physical side and the service: pulling and terminating the cameras, sizing and wiring the recording server and storage, and keeping an existing XProtect deployment running as cameras get added or replaced. For a straightforward new site, we’ll usually point you toward a simpler cloud or NVR setup — see choosing an NVR or VMS. If you’re already on XProtect and need camera work or service, or you’re choosing camera brands like Hanwha vs Hikvision to run under it, get in touch — or browse the cameras we install.