As the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to enhance video service offerings, companies can leverage video data in ways they never imagined, helping them make more informed decisions that can transform the way they do business.
Cameras keep a watchful eye over the spaces they are assigned to: monitoring people, places and things to keep the public safe. But far too often costly camera systems are employed solely for traditional surveillance — moving images are captured and stored, but countless data points go unused. With this in mind, it’s time for executives to ask themselves: How much value is hidden in our video?
The answer lies in cloud-based video intelligence, or the integration of video analysis and cloud technologies. With cloud video intelligence, companies can leverage real-time insights to revolutionize the way they utilize video footage.
Why the Cloud Is an Ideal Platform for Video Solutions
Fewer on-premise servers and more efficient hardware utilization translates to less money spent on maintaining video solutions. With the cloud, companies don’t have to worry about paying a dedicated IT team to support workloads associated with in-house servers and storing footage onsite.
Unlike analog video solutions, integrating video solutions into the cloud empowers businesses with the agility they need for instant decision-making. Instead of relying on analysts to manually review footage, for example, businesses can tap into powerful APIs that instantly analyze footage as it’s uploaded to the cloud. Companies also don’t have to worry about maintaining physical video servers as their business expands — cloud-based solutions come with rapid deployment and upgrades are released directly to the cloud. Companies can instantly increase the quality of video resolution and its retention period without requiring significant changes to existing hardware, making the cloud ideal for businesses that need to scale quickly.
Cloud-based video intelligence can still be used for surveillance, but it can also be expanded to interpret, analyze and catalog footage for other business initiatives. A hotel can keep tabs on the busiest check-in times to determine staffing levels. A retailer can measure foot traffic to choose the ideal location for a sale rack. With the help of the cloud, businesses can leverage tools like artificial intelligence to expedite the delivery of useful insights and help encourage growth.
Cloud-based AI Opens Doors to New Possibilities for Enterprise Video
Building a private AI infrastructure is costly — initial fixed costs, ongoing maintenance and massive hardware investment makes it next to impossible for a business to develop such systems on a tight timeline. Instead of building these types of solutions alone, companies can tap into pre-existing AI offerings on multiple cloud platforms as fully managed services.
With cloud-based AI, companies can build large-scale machines that can be taught to capture, analyze and process video footage depending on specific business needs. In addition to smart surveillance, cloud-based video intelligence can:
- Categorize videos in a searchable library. With AI-powered video solutions, anyone can search video catalogs the same way they would search text documents. Metadata pulled from footage is classified using facial and object recognition, creating a searchable index for easy discovery. If businesses need to search for footage of specific items, all an analyst has to do is type the wp-contentropriate keyword into a search bar and related footage should automatically wp-contentear.
- Recognize objects and faces amidst the crowd. When a child goes missing, video is the go-to solution that many security experts rely on but finding a face in a crowd can be challenging. With smart video tools, security monitors can instantly locate and analyze faces in a large collection of images, returning an accurate search that best matches the reference image. Similarly, AI-powered video tools can identify thousands of different objects, making it easier for analysts to find what they are looking for.
- Identify sentiment and consumer behaviors. A combination of facial recognition and live image analysis makes it possible for companies to use AI to detect the emotions of shoppers. With cloud-based AI, retailers can regularly identify trends in demographic activity and monitor the overall sentiment of customers in stores over time. Armed with this information about consumers, companies can make smarter decisions to increase profitability and streamline operations for greater efficiency.
After years of rudimentary surveillance, businesses are learning to leverage cloud solutions to unleash the full potential of enterprise video. From rapid deployment to AI-powered decision-making, the cloud revolutionizes video service offerings for the businesses of tomorrow.
