COPENHAGEN – 19 April 2010. Milestone Systems, the open platform company for IP video management software, has released XProtect™ Central version 3.7. XProtect Central is an operational status monitoring and alarm management solution for Milestone XProtect Corporate, XProtect Enterprise & XProtect Professional servers, video surveillance cameras and external devices. This solution ensures that operators maintain a complete overview of alarms and technical problems, allowing immediate visual verification and troubleshooting to resolve incidents fast.

Ideal for implementations with multiple sites or buildings, XProtect Central helps large security installations minimize risks and optimize operations. The visual and audio alerts can improve busy environments like alarm and dispatch centrals, where the instant access to servers and cameras translates to quick response for all locations. Using clickable graphical overviews and customizable alarms with visual verification on the status of all connections and hardware, response control is at its best.

Visually verify alarms, respond fast, audit trails
Installations with different servers, cameras and hardware must run properly to ensure top security if a device fails to record or display video, the outcome can be devastating. Milestone XProtect Central is a powerful tool for managing such operational demands to ensure maximum up-time, total overview, and fast reactions. It continuously monitors the operational status and event-triggered alarms of XProtect servers, video cameras, and integrated devices such as access control units. Security operators get instant graphical overviews of alarms and technical alerts with immediate visual verification to resolve issues.

• An alarm list displays a filtered overview of all problems for clicking directly to an incident and a beep feature can help ensure attention.
• Users can define alarm priorities, pre-define time profiles, acknowledge or reassign alarms, enable and disable alarms with controlled user commands or by hardware input signals: for example, enable a motion detected alarm when the last person leaves a building.
• Alarms triggered by an input signal have a preview image from the camera, and can be used for cameras watching each other: if one fails, the other lets you know what happened.
• Spread the workload: provide backup capacity by assigning alarm management to multiple simultaneous operators with individual rights.
• Create audit trails of events.

Easy graphical map overviews
Multi-level maps make easy navigation and identification of incident locations and the system elements involved. Alarms are shown at the highest level map, like a city site, and operators can click down to sub-level maps of buildings, rooms, gates, etc. for more details or actions.

New in XProtect Central 3.7

• Define default image quality and frame rates by alarm type, which can also be altered manually by operators when playing back an alarm or viewing a live stream. This capability reduces the system bandwidth usage and allows remote users connected via low bandwidth connections to access video sequences associated with the alarms in XProtect Central – particularly relevant when monitoring a number of distributed systems where the connections between systems are low or not guaranteed.
• Auxiliary commands enable control of such things as wipers on cameras connected via video servers. Such camera-associated devices that are connected via auxiliary connection can be controlled from the central client.
• Additional support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is now provided.

Integration with third-party systems
XProtect Central has plug-in support for third-party systems like access control or other devices. Operators can both monitor and control these from the XProtect Central interface (close or open gates, doors, turn off smoke detectors, etc.), in addition to monitoring and verifying their status and alarms.

“Milestone continuously enhances our software to increase performance for our customers. This ensures the best return on their security system investment, the ability to easily include new innovations as they become available, and most importantly constantly improves security,” says Christian Bohn, Head of Product Management at Milestone Systems. “Using XProtect Central, operators can concentrate their time on actual events and not just stare ineffectively at a monitor wall. It’s more than just alarm and operations management – it’s trouble-shooting that minimizes risk significantly.”

Milestone will be exhibiting the full line of XProtect IP video management software at the following security trade shows this spring: the MIPS Expo in Moscow April 19-22 (Hall 1, D19), Security Canada in Quebec April 20-21, and IFSEC in Birmingham UK May 10-13 (Hall 4, F90).

When the Swedish national railway began major construction of the Malmo CityTunnel Project in 2005, workplace security was of utmost concern. Now the tracks are almost ready, and it is IP video surveillance management software from Milestone Systems that helps make sure everything goes smoothly.

COPENHAGEN, March 4th, 2010. When construction is complete in December 2010, 17 kilometers of new high-tech, double-track electric rails will connect Malmo Central Station in Sweden with the Oresund Bridge to Denmark. Six kilometers of that will run underground in two parallel tunnels through the center of Malmo. The goal of the CityTunnel connection between Malmo and Copenhagen is to greatly reduce the travel time between the two cities – and not least to transform Malmo Central Station into a transit hub that powers the pan-Scandinavian network.

Several thousand people have been involved in this construction, and today around 100 men are working with the last preparations. It is precisely this reduction in personnel that has made the managers of the CityTunnel project sharpen security for the workers with IP video surveillance from Milestone Systems.

“In conjunction with reducing the workforce in this phase, we have increased the security because even though the project will soon be finished, we have to continue to ensure that the work goes smoothly and problem-free and that our employees have safe work conditions. We have therefore chosen IP network video surveillance, and it has already solved a number of issues for us,” says Mikael Lundquist, Manager for Personnel & Work Environment, CityTunnel.

In collaboration with Insupport, a Certified Milestone Partner, the CityTunnel project identified weak points in their security and it was clear that network video surveillance was necessary. The choice was Milestone XProtect™ Enterprise, an IP software solution designed as an open platform that supports the largest options for cameras and integrations with other systems – both existing and future. The video surveillance is installed in three train stations, as well as the tunnels, with about 30 Sony IP cameras, including the rugged stationary dome model SNC DF80 and the panorama model SNC RZ25 with Pan/Tilt/Zoom and day/night functionality.

Strong Nordic Partner
“The decision to use Milestone was easy. We know Milestone really well, and they offer a very strong platform that allows integration with all kinds of software and hardware. Among other things, we can archive the surveillance video in very high quality and quickly export images to other locations, which has huge value for the CityTunnel,” states Pontus Pettersson, VP at Insupport Natverksvideo.

Three security guards patrol the underground stations where the surveillance is installed. When they walk their normal rounds they can also have their colleagues follow with the video monitors at any time. The system has been used primarily for documentation which has already been a big help, for example in the case of two inebriated Danes who got lost in the tunnel in January. With the video images, there was incontrovertible evidence that was immediately given to the police.

“We have been very pleased with the Milestone software, not least because it is easy to use by our security personnel, but of course because it makes our work much safer,” concludes Mikael Lundquist.

About the Malmo CityTunnel:
The CityTunnel is one of the Swedish National Rail Administration’s projects, funded by the National Rail Administration (Banverket), the City of Malmo, Region Skaane and the EU. The project will have major impact on strengthening the entire region, with its goal to create a fast and efficient connection between Malmo Central Station and the Oresund Bridge. Learn more at www.CityTunneln.se.

About Milestone:
Founded in 1998, Milestone Systems is the leading global developer of open platform IP video management software, according to IMS Research five years in a row. XProtect™ gives users a powerful surveillance solution that is easy to manage, reliable and proven in thousands of customer installations worldwide. With support for the industry’s widest choice in network hardware and integration with other systems, XProtect provides best-of-breed solutions to ‘video enable’ organizations – reducing costs, optimizing processes, protecting people and assets. Milestone software is sold through authorized and certified partners.