A spate of predatory mergers and acquisitions has seen almost all the true developers of video analytics bought up by camera manufacturers and VMS developers.
It may well become a case of the last man standing. There remain only two or three genuine (vendor-agnostic) companies who are dedicated to developing intelligent scene analysis algorithms.
SoS caught up with Chalon Dilber who is BDM for the MENA region at VCA Technology. On their Intersec stand (SA H31) [@VCAtechnology] the company can indisputably show that they are a true developer of software that can turn camera feeds into actionable data – making sense of what the camera has seen.
Chalon sees analytics as an instance of applied intelligence. He takes pride in the fact that VCA Technology can work with any headend system, extracting meaningful incidents from camera feeds for both retrospective analysis and proactive intervention while an incident is occurring. “Openness” is a watchword at VCA and it runs through the whole platform – from software to user guides to software development kits (SDKs). Resources are simply open to download and analyse by partners as they work together on solutions.
Metadata is open standards compliant with ONVIF being a significant part of the company’s general roadmap to ease compatibility with third parties. “Proprietary” is not a word in the VCA Technology dictionary. Integration with just about every conceivable VMS and PSIM (Physical Security Information Management) platform is achievable and indeed, a given. This covers everything from camera selection to alerts on atypical behaviour.
The VCA Technology approach is proving particularly valuable in vertical markets which require flexibility. This can be sites with intense vehicle traffic where VCA excel at ANPR, factory automation with analytics reporting on anything unusual in a batch of products or behaviour of machinery, to contributing to the intelligence required for integrating diverse infrastructure within safe or smart cities.
“Killer apps” is the phrase that Chalon decides on as he describes this. The analytics can also reduce shrinkage (theft) in retail environments or simply allow site owners to analyse footfall and optimize their store layouts in response.
All this is figure-driven, to the extent of reporting on, say, the number of illegal ‘U’ turns in a part of a city on a given day or across a week so helping city planners and transport authorities. Many companies across the halls of Intersec describe themselves as being true integration partners with fellow technology vendors. VCA’s claims in this area are powerful and demonstrable.
