Podcast: Milestone Changes Up Training/Certification Strategy, Welcomes a New ‘Community’
At the annual Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS), the company introduced a newly restructured training and certification strategy. Listen to Greg Willmarth, manager of learning and performance, explain reasons behind the transformation.
Greg Willmarth, Milestone Systems' manager of learning and performance.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – If you are familiar with Milestone Systems then you also know the leading VMS specialist has long branded itself – indelibly – as the open platform company. But now there’s been an evolution of sorts to that namesake. Enter the open platform community. The new tagline was revealed Tuesday at the Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS), a two-day learning and networking affair held here through Wednesday at the Talking Stick Resort.
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SSI Senior Editor Rodney Bosch is attending the conference. He caught up with Greg Willmarth, Milestone’s manager of learning and performance, to hear more about the redefining of the corporate moniker and the inspiration behind it. As you can listen to Willmarth explain in this brief podcast, this isn’t simply an empty marketing ploy. The company has worked diligently to expand its purview of the channel in order to maximize growth and ultimately better serve end customers.
To that end, Milestone has made wholesale changes to its approach to training and product certification. Where once a reseller would complete product certification at the conclusion of training curriculum, now the two are mutually exclusive. Willmarth said the company is trying to build up to something more akin to a Microsoft or Cisco certification.
“It’s beyond just being able to technically install our products. It expands into being able to design a solution … [by] leveraging all of our technology partners. We want to leverage our access control partners, our video analytics partners, to solve those challenges that our customers have,” Willmarth explained. “That is where Milestone is really starting to push and really lead the industry in saying, ‘It’s not enough to be certified on our technology. We really need you to be certified in all of the technologies of our open platform community.'”
Listen to the podcast below:
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About the Author
Rodney Bosch, Senior Editor
Although Bosch’s name is quite familiar to those in the security industry, his previous experience has been in daily newspaper journalism. Prior to joining SECURITY SALES & INTEGRATION in 2006, he spent 15 years with the Los Angeles Times, where he performed a wide assortment of editorial responsibilities, including feature and metro department assignments as well as content producing for latimes.com. Bosch is a graduate of California State University, Fresno with a degree in Mass Communication & Journalism. In 2007, he successfully completed the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association’s National Training School coursework to become a Certified Level I Alarm Technician.
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