VisualCortex signs agreement with Servian, appointing the leading data consultancy as key service delivery partner for its video analytics technology across Australia and New Zealand
Under the guidelines of the partnership agreement, Servian will be permitted to recommend VisualCortex’s Video Intelligence Platform – as well as deliver implementation, integration, model building and associated professional services – to its current and future clients throughout Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).
Servian, Australia’s largest data-focused cloud consultancy, was acquired by US-based multinational IT services firm, Cognizant, in January 2021. Servian and VisualCortex have already collaborated to deliver computer vision outcomes for government entities and transport organizations.
Servian National Managing Partner, David Emery, said that the partnership would help its Australian and New Zealand clients exploit and act on video-based insights at scale.
“As a consultancy, Servian is constantly focused on how we bring value to our customers quickly,” said Emery.
“The partnership with VisualCortex allows us to bring a platform approach to video analytics, meaning quickly focusing on the usage of data – and the insights and decisions we can make from it – instead of spending all our time on the engineering and integration.”
“Historically, analytics has focused on data from the core systems in our businesses. Video analytics gives us the ability to leverage data, which was previously untapped, to generate new insights about new areas as well as new perspectives on existing parts of our businesses.”
“At Servian, we don’t see video analytics as a standalone service offering. We see it as part of the instrumental data backbone of an organization. VisualCortex will help us achieve that vision.”
VisualCortex CEO and Co-Founder, Patrick Elliott, said that partnering with Servian was an integral moment in the company’s evolution, growing its reach and helping to service its customers throughout the region.
“Servian is a genuine computer vision pioneer and force in data services throughout the ANZ region,” said Elliott.
“As both an emerging technology and market, Gartner cites the top two challenges facing organizations undertaking AI projects – like Computer Vision – as a lack of skills as well as an inability to understand potential use cases and connect them to real-world challenges.”
“We know that Servian has the skills, and practical experience delivering real-world computer vision projects, to help organizations achieve business value quickly and great ROI over the long haul.”
“Their deep footprint, trusted client relationships and large workforce will also help us scale fast, underpinning VisualCortex’s channel-based go-to-market strategy across ANZ.”
VisualCortex began life as a Servian prototype, conceptualized by Andy Huang (Associate Partner and Head of AI / ML at Servian) and initially built by Servian’s Research and Development team.
Following the sale of Servian, Founder and former-CEO, Tony Nicol, co-founded VisualCortex as a standalone company.
Servian’s former Head of Research and Development, Ben Evans, was appointed CTO and Co-Founder. With a core group of developers working under his leadership, Evans revamped the initial VisualCortex codebase to create an enterprise-ready video analytics platform.
Huang said that the VisualCortex partnership would enable Servian clients to facilitate enterprise-wide computer vision programs.
“Unlike camera-side or point solutions – which typically focus on one video analytics challenge per deployment – VisualCortex delivers a highly performant enterprise-grade platform to facilitate any real-time or historical video analytics use case,” said Huang.
“Where VisualCortex offers significant value to Servian’s clients is its extensibility – it’s easy to deploy, use and add new use cases as they emerge.”
“We’re able to leverage commodity hardware to perform video analytics at scale. VisualCortex can also be deployed anywhere clients desire – from on-premise and on-the-edge, to public and private clouds, or a hybrid approach.”
“This means we get started faster and significantly reduce the barrier-to-entry for our customers. Through the platform approach, we’re also able to readily adapt to changing client needs.”
“Once we’ve started a video analytics project, we often find that three or four other use cases quickly emerge.”
“With a range of intuitive dashboards and reports, combined with the ability to easily integrate video-based data generated in VisualCortex with other data sources, we see enormous potential to democratize access to video analytics throughout the enterprise.”
“We want to enable our customers to realize the value across all parts of their organisation.”
Servian works with a wide range of customers within the video analytics field, across ANZ – from retail and transport, to logistics and occupational health and safety.
“We’re particularly excited to see how we can help our transport clients enhance their computer vision capabilities with VisualCortex,”
“We’ll do this across a range of use cases – from proactive incident detection and traffic flow management, to timetable optimization and automated number plate recognition.” said Emery.
