Five years ago, Milestone Systems launched video management software to be embedded by various hardware vendors. The embedded software was dubbed “Arcus” and was the first release from the VMS firm’s Incubation and Ventures business unit that had been launched a year prior in 2012.
Fast-forward to this week at ISC West where the platform, now known as “Arcules,” is making its industry debut as an independent spin-off from Milestone parent Canon to provide the industry with a new offering in the intelligent video data arms race.
According to Arcules CEO Andreas Pettersson, when Arcus was initially developed, there was a trend in the industry at the time of pushing more and more functionality to the edge and that people had only started to explore how to make use of the increasing array of internet-connected sensors at their disposal, which we know today as the Internet of Things or IoT. Pettersson said this, combined with the market’s increasing adoption of cloud technology, has subsequently opened a new opportunity in the industry for a solution that can combine all of these things into a unified platform for intelligent video data aggregation and analysis.
“We will define this new category in the industry and showcase what’s possible for businesses when they take a deeper dive into connected video data,” he said.
According to Pettersson, the idea behind Arcules was to provide everything as a cloud service, taking full advantage of the scalability and reliability offered by the cloud within a video surveillance context and then adding their platform on top of that.
“Video surveillance in the cloud exists on the market today, and its scalability and reliability is key to our offering,” he said. “What’s different about Arcules is that we take advantage of that infrastructure -- the scale and the speed to deployment -- to then apply our machine learning algorithms and identify opportunities for safer, more efficient operations for the end user.”
Helping End-Users Get More out of Their Video Data
Although the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology has people thinking about leveraging video in ways they haven’t before, the fact remains that most video data being generated today still isn’t being used for purposes outside of security. Because Arcules connects video storage with IoT sensors, Pettersson says end-users will have the ability to mine data in ways that simply weren’t available with other previous solutions.
“Monitoring traditional video feeds is helpful in the moment for security purposes, but there is additional potential when that data can be stored and analyzed within the cloud on a larger scale,” said Pettersson.
Because analytics in most on-premises surveillance systems today are typically used in one-off instances and not as a part of an integrated network that includes multiple locations, Pettersson says this data cannot be easily aggregated and correlated but that won’t be a problem for Arcules.
“Arcules can analyze data across properties, identify trends and then use predictive analytics to make a proactive recommendation to the user. For instance, the data can identify that check-in queue times across hotel properties seem to be longest from 5-7 p.m. The platform can then recommend adjusting staffing at that time to improve the customer experience.”
The Importance of Independence
In putting the business case for Arcules together to present to Canon, Pettersson says it was paramount for the company to be independently operated moving forward so that they could set their own strategic direction.
“We’re absolutely building off our foundation at Milestone Systems and the expertise our team developed there,” said Pettersson. “From that foundation, however, we’re taking a step forward with our vision to help optimize businesses and create a safer world.”
Since last summer, Pettersson says that they have put together an accomplished engineering team and continue to hire people as quickly as they can to fill out their business development group to prepare for their general market launch.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
