Thursday, October 30, 2008

ioimage Intelligent Video Appliances Protect $104.5 Million School Construction Site

ioimage, the pioneer of intelligent video appliances, announced its video analytics solution was recently installed at the construction site of a new, $104.5 million high school for the Poway Unified School District (PUSD) in Southern California to protect the site and construction materials from theft and vandalism.

Systems integrator HowTec Video Security Systems of Vista, California, incorporated ioimage’s video appliances into a Mobile Surveillance Trailer equipped with a DVR, Pelco Spectra IV camera system, cellular router, back-up battery and GPS system. With the addition of video analytics from ioimage, the unit provides around-the-clock intelligent video surveillance of the entire construction site with proactive video alerts monitored by a remote video monitoring station.

The system was purchased by Barnhart Inc., the fourth largest educational builder in the nation, when combined with their parent company, Heery International. Barnhart is the contractor for PUSD’s new high school in Northern San Diego County.

“I wanted to look at a different means of monitoring my site,” said Mike Derouin, Senior Project Manager for Barnhart. “We found that the security guards we used in the past were not effective because they were not always alert.”

Three Mobile Surveillance Trailers monitor the 64-acre site. Together, they are expected to save the construction company $100,000 in security guard expenses and will be deployed at other construction sites once this project is completed in the spring of 2009. The third unit, delivered in July, was upgraded with ioimage’s video analytics, replacing a sensor-based technology that caused a large number of false alarms.

Greg Howard, owner of HowTec Video Security Systems, decided to incorporate ioimage intelligent video appliances into the Mobile Surveillance Trailer because he recognized the advantages ioimage’s technology provided to his customer. “We are always looking for ways to improve our products and want an edge over our competitors with the technology we offer and at the right price,” said Howard. “We achieved all of these objectives by upgrading our Mobile Surveillance Trailers with video analytics from ioimage.”

“ioimage video analytics appliances are a viable alternative to sensor-based surveillance technology, providing a reliable and cost-effective security solution,” said John Whiteman, Vice President & General Manager of ioimage North America. “We’re excited to be part of the Poway Unified School District construction project and are looking forward to future collaboration with HowTec.”

About ioimage
ioimage, the pioneer of intelligent video appliances, provides high-performance video encoders and cameras with built-in self sustained video analytics, designed and packaged for simplicity. ioimage offers a new approach to video security by transforming surveillance into a proactive, event-driven process. Founded in 2000, ioimage uses edge and centralized DSP-based devices for real-time detection, alert and tracking of intruders, vehicles and other threats, leading to enhanced safety and security for government, public and commercial organizations. Recognized as the world’s market leader for intelligent cameras and encoders since 2005 with over 37 percent of the market, ioimage operates in 35 countries through a network of more than 100 partners. For further information, visit
www.ioimage.com.

To receive regular updates on ioimage, sign up for the ioimage newsletter at
http://www.ioimage.com/newsletter.html

About HowTec Video Security Systems
HowTec Video Security Systems is a systems integrator that serves the Southern California market. Founded in 2001 and based in Vista, Calif., HowTec Video Security Systems specializes in providing surveillance solutions to the construction, government and education markets. The company's motto is "We offer the best value for the money." For more information on HowTec Video Security Systems, visit
www.howtec.net.

For international media inquiries:

Fiona Ungar

Marketing Communications Manager

Tel: +972-9-954-6003
fiona@ioimage.com

For US media inquiries:
Chelsie Woods
ioimage Public Relations
Tel: +1-207-510-0029
cwoods@eclipsemediagroup.net

Monday, October 20, 2008

Milestone Selects Cernium as Solutions Partner of the Year 2008

Cernium recognized for seamless integration of Perceptrak® with Milestone™ XProtect™ Enterprise

Reston, VA – October 14, 2008 – Cernium Corporation, the leading developer of video analytics-enabled products, has been selected Milestone Solutions Partner of the Year 2008. The Milestone Partner Awards are presented each year to distinguished leaders in IP video, and Cernium is recognized for its seamless integration of Perceptrak advanced video analytics software with Milestone’s video management platform.

"We are honored to be recognized by Milestone,” said Melissa Blake, Perceptrak Product Manager. “The complete solution brings exceptional value to IP video surveillance installations, and we are excited to continue extending this award-winning solution to partners and end users alike."

“Cernium has distinguished itself as a Milestone Partner of the Year 2008 because the company has fully embraced our Milestone Solutions Partner concept by performing a tight integration using the Milestone Software Development Kit (SDK) and its Application Program Interfaces (APIs) with the Perceptrak application. Such cohesive solutions based on the true open platform for best-of-breed IP video add real value in our eco-system and the surveillance market worldwide,” said Martin Kaufmann, MSP Program Manager for Milestone Systems.

Perceptrak by Cernium is an open standards software add-in to the Milestone IP video management platform that offers powerful analytics capabilities to help achieve safety and security objectives. Perceptrak analyzes video in real time and adds meta data about the content so administrators and operators can apply an information-based decision making approach to better manage, distribute, monitor, store and query video.

The integrated solution is simple to use and operates on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware to provide maximum design flexibility. Perceptrak also easily scales with Milestone XProtect Enterprise to accommodate system growth and changing security requirements. For more information, please visit http://www.cernium.com/.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Milestone Integration Platform Symposium Sharpens Focus On IP video surveillance leader

Milestone Systems held its bi-annual 'MIPS' event last week: the Milestone Integration Platform Symposium. Several hundred international security industry professionals gathered to learn the latest in digital surveillance solutions, and one of the first presentations from IMS Research announced that Milestone is the number one 'software only' supplier of IP video management software, according to their 2008 report due out soon.


Twice a year the Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS) gathers the IP elite to hear industry speakers, interact in workshops, participate in training and certifications, see exhibitions from manufacturers and solution partners, and network with some of the most successful IP video systems integrators, resellers, distributors and hardware producers. These conferences have become important focal points for the ever-growing Milestone eco-system to ramp up expertise, share knowledge, brainstorm for new innovations, and learn about the latest solutions in IP video technology.


Almost 300 people attended the conference held in Copenhagen over several days, including training sessions for many systems integration partners. Thirty countries were represented. Exhibitors included such Milestone alliance hardware and solution partners as ACTi, Agent VI, Axis, Cernium, CNL, IQinVision, JVC, Keeneo, Mate, Mobotix, OPAX, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Sanyo, Sony, Technology Associates, UDP Technology, Via:sys, and Vidient.


IP video surveillance market trends and forecasts James McManus from IMS Research revealed advance highlights from their upcoming 2007 market analysis of the video surveillance industry, including the announcement that Milestone proved to be number one for open platform IP video management in the 'software only' category worldwide (for vendors of pure IP video software solutions independent of hardware). Other market analyses were presented by Thomas Kalling, PhD at Lund University, and Jeff Kessler, Managing Director of Imperial Capital.


John Honovich, consultant and founder of the internet site www.ipvideomarket.info gave his insights on video analytics and how open platform IP video is the way to win. Keven Marier, founder of IPVS, described the importance of training to move the convergence of IP forward in the security industry through greater education and expertise.


Martin Gren, Co-Founder of Axis Communications, discussed the future of network cameras with new compression standards, de-centralized storage, analytics at the edge, and the Open Network Video Interface Forum (OnVIF) for global industry hardware standards - an initiative spearheaded by Axis, Bosch and Sony that can help expand the IP surveillance market.


Arnaud Ganaye, Head of the NeXt Surveillance project at Orange Technocenter (a division of France Telecom) proposed hosted video surveillance solutions through telecommunications providers as a new business opportunity.


Customer presentations illustrate IP technology in practice James Milton, Founder of Milton Technologies, detailed the use of thermal imaging and analytics to manage challenges in metals recycling, and Sherman Hall from the Atherton, California, police showed how Milestone IP video improves community safety and response to alerts. The University of East Anglia in the UK also illustrated how large and complex campus environments benefit from Milestone IP video surveillance software.


Milestone Partner Awards distinguish leaders in IP video Milestone Partner of the Year 2008 awards were given out with much fanfare. For outstanding distribution, project sales and system integrator installations, these partners were honored: CAMSECURE of South Africa, Com-Scan of Norway, Digitalcom Limited of Thailand, Elmat SPA of Italy, Infosec Communications of Dubai, John Lay Electronics of Switzerland, RUSLAN Communications of Russia, Secured by Web of the Netherlands, SmartGuard of Denmark, SMTechnology of the UK, and Solytron of Bulgaria.


Milestone Manufacturer Alliance Partner of the Year 2008 was announced to be JVC Professional, whose close collaboration covers both support of their network cameras and JVC VR-N1600U Network Video Recorders embedded with Milestone XProtect video management software.


The Milestone Solution Partner of the Year 2008 is Cernium, a Frost & Sullivan 'Emerging Company of the Year in Video Surveillance' for intelligent analytics. Their Perceptrak(r) solutions for incident detection and greater operational flexibility lower the cost and add value to integrated Milestone IP video management implementations.


The next Milestone Integration Platform Symposium will be held the second week in February 2009 at the Red Rock Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada.


About Milestone: Milestone Systems is a global thought leader and developer of open platform IP video management software. The XProtect(tm) platform is easy to use, robust and proven in more than 35,000 customer installations around the world. With support for the industry's widest choice in network hardware and seamless integration with other systems, XProtect provides best-of-breed solutions to "video enable" businesses, organizations and institutions - reducing costs, optimizing processes, and protecting assets. Milestone software is sold through authorized partners in 90 countries.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Full-Featured Video Analytics Platform Available in Smart Camera Format

Apollo Imaging Technologies releases AIT100 as a ready-to-run Video Analytics on the Edge platformRAMONA, Calif., Oct. 1 -- Meeting the needs of Video Analytics developers for a standalone video acquisition and processing system, Apollo Imaging Technologies releases the AIT100 Intelligent Image Processing system. A fully featured open Video Analytics on the Edge (VAE) development platform, the AIT100 is suitable both for prototype development and production.

The AIT100 is based on the Texas Instruments TMS320DM642 720mHz DSP with a full complement of resources -- 256M SDRAM, 32M flash, 10/100 Ethernet, RS232/485, analog video out, audio in/out, and general purpose I/O and IEEE 802.3af compliant Power over Ethernet. Image acquisition is either built-in megapixel sensors or external NTSC/PAL video.

To speed development of VAE applications, the AIT100 is available with an SDK that includes an IP Camera demo application with a Windows client, a complete Board Support Package (BSP), and a JPEG encoder. The IP Camera demo application is DSP/BIOS(TM) based and requires Texas Instruments' Code Composer Studio(TM) and a compatible emulator. The windows client application is a Microsoft .Net(TM) application and will require Microsoft Visual Studio(TM) if any modifications are required. Image processing algorithms written in C have proven to be readily ported to the platform.

"Video Analytics on the Edge (in the camera) offers a variety of advantages: full frame rate raw video is available to the image processing algorithm; information sparse video need not tie up the network bandwidth -- only video of interest need be transmitted. Additionally, system expansion and management is much simplified -- each camera comes with its own resources. Not only is the camera smaller, less complex and much more power-efficient than a conventional PC-based system, the VAE system enables high response rate/low latency solutions simply not possible in a networked environment," said Richard P. McClellan, CEO of Apollo Imaging Technologies.

Subset configurations or custom designs are available, based on quantity.

About Apollo Imaging Technologies, Inc.:

Apollo Imaging Technologies was founded in 2002 by a group of veterans in DSP video processing applications. Apollo Imaging Technologies provides products and design services for security, biometric and industrial vision applications requiring video processing in the camera. For more information, see http://www.apollo-image.com/

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

ACIC and its partner Comtec System have won two major projects

ACIC and its partner Comtec System have won two major projects for the installation of videosurveillance systems in Kuwait City. The first project addresses perimiter security of the Shuaiba Industrial Area, which includes the oil refineries of Mina Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah (150+ cameras).

ACIC will apply its MvActivityDetection solution for Intrusion Detection.
The second project is based on a brand new technology developed by ACIC for coastal surveillance (more than 10km). This combines MvActivityDetection and sweeping thermal cameras acting like RADAR and is called MvPanoramaDetection. This project is conducted in collaboration with Videotec, the European Leader in Camera Housing, PTZ Head and Accessories.


http://www.acic.eu

Thursday, October 09, 2008

MATE Intelligent Video Announced Milestone Solution Partnership

Integrated offering is a comprehensive security analytics solution.

Copenhagen, Denmark and Yehud, Israel, 30 September 2008 - MATE Intelligent Video, the technology leader in video analytics and intelligent video surveillance systems, and Milestone Systems, a global developer of open platform IP video management software, announced today a partnership agreement to deliver a comprehensive security solution.MATE’s advanced security solutions, Behavior WatchTM analytic video server and TriggerTM analytic video encoder, are now integrated with Milestone XProtectTM IP Video Management software to provide end users with a seamless solution for real-time proactive surveillance.

"The integration of a leading management system such as Milestone XProtect with MATE’s advanced video analytics not only enhances both parties offerings and opens new channels, but also provides the market with a greatly enhanced security surveillance solution that will benefit the end-user,” said Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dr. Uri Engelhard, President & CEO for MATE.

MATE’s advanced solutions for behavior detection leverage powerful video analysis algorithms that transform any analog or IP surveillance camera into an intelligent detection sensor: Trigger is a compact, low-power intelligent video detection encoder providing video stream with detection overlay for one, two or four video inputs analyzed concurrently. Behavior Watch is a hybrid video analysis server-based system that can analyze up to eight video feeds, including advanced human/object classification, and Scene Switch for tracking up to four different scenes from a single video feed.

The Milestone XProtect platform is a robust IP video management solution designed for any size enterprise. It optimizes bandwidth usage and scales to handle any number of cameras. Reliable and easy to use, XProtect allows operators to centrally, locally or remotely view live or recorded video to manage thousands of surveillance cameras from multiple locations simultaneously.

“Both Milestone and MATE are designed with open platforms that allow integration of their capabilities, and our partnership is very fruitful, clearly demonstrating the potential of open platforms in this industry. By using the Milestone SDK, MATE has integrated several analytics solutions into the Milestone XProtect IP video management software in record time.” said Martin Kaufmann, MSP Program Manager at Milestone. “Incorporating MATE’s value-adding video analytics into the Milestone XProtect Analytics Framework provides customers with a powerful yet easy-to-manage system.”

About MATEMATE

Intelligent Video is a global provider of cutting-edge, real time video analytics solutions for proactive video and IP surveillance, people and car counting, and tailgating detection. MATE’s advanced video content analysis technology detects and analyzes potential threats and hazards, generating real-time alerts based on user’s pre-defined parameters.

Founded in 1997, MATE has gained extensive experience in the video analytics field, and has positioned itself as a market leader. Leveraging an open architecture, MATE’s flexible and field-proven solutions integrate easily into any network topology, and are sold, installed and supported by top tier systems integrators and distributors worldwide. www.mate.co.ilPress Contact:Lizy GedalyahuMarketing Communications Managerlizy@mate.co.il

About Milestone

Milestone Systems is a global thought leader and developer of open platform IP video management software. The XProtect™ platform is easy to use, robust and proven in more than 35,000 customer installations around the world. With support for the industry’s widest choice in network hardware and seamless integration with other systems, XProtect provides best-of-breed solutions to “video enable” businesses, organizations and institutions - reducing costs, optimizing processes, and protecting assets. Milestone software is sold through authorized partners in 90 countries.

Press Contact:
Courtney Dillon Pedersen
Media & Communications Manager
+45 88 300 330