Eagle eye acquires Indian analytics firm Uncanny Vision

Cloud surveillance solutions provider Eagle Eye Networks has announced its plans to acquire the Indian video analytics startup Uncanny Vision, to provide more AI functionality to its customers. The company will open its first regional office in India and invest in research and development.
 
Speaking to asmag.com, Dean Drako, CEO of Eagle Eye Networks, said that the deal will help its systems integrators partner offer more cloud-based

features to their customers, enhancing customer experience, and adding more opportunities for recurring revenue.
 
"One of the things that the uncanny acquisition will deliver is more cloud-based services that integrators can sell to their customers," Drako said. "Eagle Eye already provides a cloud video surveillance service that our integrators sell and earn recurring revenue from our customers. We will continually add new features and new capabilities using the uncanny AI to deliver."

More strength in the transportation vertical

Traffic management is one of the strongest areas for Uncanny Vision. Drako pointed out that Uncanny's license plate recognition feature was especially impressive and would benefit Eagle Eye customers.
 
"Uncanny Vision has a strong license plate recognition solution, which we've benchmarked and found to be the best in industry," Drako said. "And so obviously, we're going to leverage that with our customers as much as we possibly can. We have a lot of customers who are interested and want to deploy license plate technology for various purposes from parking lots management to traffic monitoring and safety."
 
He added that Eagle Eye would also use other AI features from Uncanny. One of the first things the company plans to deploy is a search solution that will allow people to search their videos more effectively than ever before. Customers can expect new features to roll out in the first half of 2022.

Plans to leverage low-level implementation strengths

Besides the license plate recognition capabilities, Eagle Eye was also attracted to Uncanny's knowledge of low-level implementation and their DSP background. Drako believes that this would help Eagle Eye ramp up its analytics offering while lowering the costs.
 
"The uncanny team has got low-level implementation knowledge, and they come from a DSP background with a lot of experience at low-level implementations," Drako said. "So, they understand how this how classifications and inference engines get deployed in real hardware. This knowledge was also essential to us because it'll allow us to deliver AI implementations that are very efficient, very effective, and very inexpensive compared to what others can offer."

Plans to expand channel and partner more integrators

With the acquisition of Uncanny Vision and offering additional features, Eagle Eye aims to attract more integrators to work with them, boosting their footprint.
 
"We have more customers than our current channel can handle," explains Drako. "So, we need to add other systems integrators to the Eagle Eye sales channel. Cloud video surveillance is experiencing unprecedented growth, and we need more integrators and resellers to meet the demand."
 
To this end, the company is offering training on deploying the Cloud, using Cloud, and keeping Cloud operational. They also have the Eagle Eye University, which provides extensive training both online and in person. The company is also expanding its support for camera brands.
 
"We work with literally 10,000 different makes, models, and brands of cameras and are supporting more and more every hour to make sure that our customers and our resellers have the maximum choice," Drako added.

The Uncanny effect

All 60 Uncanny Vision employees will be retained, and Eagle Eye plans to expand the Bangalore office. Eagle Eye will continue to support Uncanny Vision's current customers and will build its global infrastructure.
 
Speaking about the deal, Alper Cetingok, MD and Head of the Security & Safety Practice at Raymond James, said that the economic model of delivering subscription-based AI on a per-camera basis through a global cloud infrastructure would ignite growth for security integrators who are otherwise challenged with how to build a financially stable business.

What asmag thinks

The deal is significant as the market sees an increased interest in cloud-based surveillance systems. A recent asmag.com survey revealed that a large chunk of respondents was likely to install a cloud-based solution this year. Incidentally, many respondents also see Eagle Eye as the first "true cloud vendor."

Read the full report of asmag.com's survey on cloud surveillance systems here
 
But our surveys have also shown that customers are unsure which vendor to approach because the industry remains highly fragmented. Many customers cannot differentiate between companies that offer pure cloud-based systems and others who connect networks to cloud storage and label themselves cloud service providers.
 
The deal with Uncanny Vision provides Eagle Eye an opportunity to strengthen its presence because analytics is all set to be the game-changer for the surveillance industry. Research from Memoori has shown that investments in AI analytics and cloud technology would be the main drivers of growth for this industry.