The retail sector has really been a great sector to highlight the evolution of the importance of surveillance. We have seen cameras go from being used retrospectively, purely for security reasons, to an integral business tool of a retail outlet, capable of providing business intelligence powerful enough to boost profits.
People counting, facial recognition, heatmaps, POS integration, occupancy management and mask detection are not unfamiliar technologies within the retail sector. What we have seen in the past is that these technologies can be hardware dependent and may require multiple platforms to provide a retail outlet with the required intelligence.
We, as IOT Revolution Technologies, believe in the power of cloud and reducing the hardware footprint on site. Moving towards the cloud allows us to become less dependent on hardware for processing power and to provide specific analytics, and by reducing the hardware footprint we also reduce points of failure. Through platforms such as Dragonfruit AI and Verkada, we are able to achieve a high level of business intelligence without having to deploy multiple platforms and numerous pieces of hardware capable of processing each analytic, helping retailers visualise their space and optimise their operation effectively.
Being on a cloud-based, ‘software first’ approach platform also means that when new analytics modules are developed they will be added to your organisation, Moving us to a split AI model. A split AI model will mean the camera is purely responsible for capturing an image, the rest of the processing is done in the cloud and the end user never has to worry about running out of processing power.
Cloud-based platforms will allow retailers the ability the generate the business intelligence they are used to, faster, with greater ease, with greater flexibility and without having to worry about replacing servers and expensive, purpose-built cameras. If we can change the way we think about surveillance and traditional architecture solutions, we will realise what a powerful business tool a CCTV system can be, and that surveillance also has a true business purpose within our organisations.
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