By Jay McCall, Editor, Business Solutions Magazine
A physical security systems integrator’s close attention to detail throughout the sales and implementation process is key to ensuring successful installs and long-term customer satisfaction. In the burgeoning video surveillance market, it is not a major accomplishment if a physical security integrator is “having a good year.” After all, the rising tide lifts all ships, as the saying goes. What is impressive, however, is seeing how systems integrators like Digital Surveillance Solutions (DSS) are able to achieve year-over-year double-digit growth — despite the ups and downs of the economy and whether the video surveillance market is booming or not. I recently spoke with Michael Blumenson, president of DSS, who shared with me the mindset his employees have adopted, which he believes is a critical component to his company’s success.
One of the key physical security vendors that partnered with DSS since the beginning is VMS (video management software) vendor Milestone Systems. “Milestone’s products [e.g., XProtect® Enterprise] have been important to our ongoing success. Their software is built on an open platform, which gives us the freedom to integrate with a variety of technology partners and it has helped us influence IT decision makers’ buying decisions. As IP video technology has become mainstream, we’ve seen IT directors playing a growing role in the sales and implementation processes — especially with regard to provisioning and configuring servers, storage, and software on their IP network.” One customer that illustrates the success and longevity of DSS’ partnership with Milestone is the University at Buffalo (UB), which is a public research university with 30,000 students and multiple campuses located in Buffalo and Amherst, NY. “We’ve been selling IP video systems to the UB for more than 10 years now,” says Blumenson. “Our first implementations began with a small video surveillance project funded by one department. With subsequent projects, we continued to utilize Milestone and we were successful in creating a de facto VMS standard despite individual departments continuing to make separate buying decisions. In time, we were able to unify Milestone across all departments and campuses when large grant-funded projects were deployed. On two separate occasions, independent security consultants embraced the existing Milestone platform as the correct VMS for UB to continue its VMS expansion. Today, Milestone aggregates more than 600 IP video cameras (and growing) on the UB campus, which DSS manages and supports.
Read the full article about Milestone Partner DSS.