Khun Ranee Sitthikaew, i-PRO’S Business Head of Indochina, has seen several major shifts in the Thai security market – first the move to IP video surveillance and now the move towards AI solutions.
Khun Ranee Sitthikaew, i-PRO’S Business Head of Indochina, has seen several major shifts in the Thai security market – first the move to IP video surveillance and now the move towards AI solutions.
The security industry needs agile brands that can quickly customize and respond to client’s demands. Most of the projects i-PRO deals with in Thailand are focused on renovating old infrastructure. Being a Japanese brand, one of their strongest strong market sectors is Japanese manufacturers that have set up facilities in Thailand.
Nonetheless, i-PRO also sees a lot of potential in smart city projects and mixed use complexes that combine housing, hospitality, offices and retail in one place. “Smart city projects have their own set of challenges,” Ranee said, “since many concepts and solutions come under this umbrella term, not just security.”
There are close to 200 integrators that can carry and install i-PRO products in Thailand, and the brand also works with other partners. “Our direction as i-PRO is to be an open platform. We work together with other companies like OPTEX, for security sensors or with VAXTOR on parking management and License Plate Recognition. On the VMS side we mostly work with Genetec, and Luxriot is also a recent addition to our partner network. In the past signing a contract for SDK was long, but now it is simplified,” Ranee said.
i-PRO points to AI as one of the key differentiators between companies today.
“We see that the clients’ goals now are focused on reducing manpower and increasing the efficiency of operations. The Thai market is seeing a growing number of video channels, but not necessarily growth in dollar amounts, since hardware prices are dropping. Within video surveillance the AI segment will continue growing since labor cost is growing and AI is a tool that can help increase efficiency and reduce manpower. Today system integrators can make more money from software integration than from product sales. We also have local software developers that develop applications for the edge device to help integrators. The way to get more margin is through AI, advanced specs and better after sales service. That’s why in i-PRO we now offer 5-year warranty,” she added.
However, the popularity and potential of AI are not without downsides. “One of the issues when talking about AI technology is that the customer feels AI can do everything, but they don’t know that AI requires learning and training. This causes client expectations to not always be realistic. A second challenge is that customers are not always willing to pay the cost for training an AI system. Many of the AI functions are similar between vendors, we proud ourselves that we provide AI without additional costs and that as a Japanese brand our accuracy standards are higher,” Ranee said.
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