HITT- Physical Security and AI Analytics – July 30, 2024

Introduction to IoT and Physical Security Solutions
This discussion involves IoT and the physical security solutions these technologies provide and why and how you can offer these to your clients.

Here with a fascinating rundown of these technologies are Telarus VP of advanced networking and mobility, Graeme Scott, and director of AIoT sales at Epic. Io, Skyler Stewart. Graeme, Skyler, welcome. These are powerful new offerings, and I have to admit I learned a lot about them this week.

Yeah. Good morning, Doug. And, we’re gonna bring Skyler in here in just a couple minutes to talk about it. But this is, I think, one of the coolest technologies we have in the portfolio.

Really neat stuff. A lot of cool things you can do with it. And just another example of how AI is really changing a lot of our product sets. So this is, when you’ve got customers, we know that you’ve got customers that are asking about AI. We’ve developed that AI solution tool for you to use to help with this. But this product is one of those products that can answer the bell as far as customers looking to get into the AI game. So we’re gonna dive into that in just a few minutes.

Update on Technology Solution Map
Before I do that, Lela, if you wanna go to the next slide.

I do wanna give a shout out to my colleagues who ran the call last week. Doug, as you said, that was a really, really good call. Very comprehensive review of all of the, interesting things that have happened so far this year. Kobe, Sam, and Jason delivered some just phenomenal content.

So if you didn’t get a chance to check that out, please go back and look at it. Really give you some good pointers to guide your customers through some of those changes. Definitely recommend you check it out. Of course, as with all of our hit series, I mean, I’m a little biased I know, but I think they’re all pretty good.

So, next slide there, Lela.

Alright. Before we, jump into our content here, I wanted to point to something that you may have noticed. We just recently updated this in our back office.

This was formally known as the swim lanes of technology, and our team put a lot of work together putting this together and updating it. And it’s definitely something I wanna make sure everybody is aware of. So this is what we call the technology solution map, and we’ve updated it to include a lot of the AI solutions embedded in their technology types. So what we recommend for all of our partners and tech advisors is to take a look at this, print it down, put your logo on it, and send it out to your clients.

Importance of Technology Awareness and Usage
So one of the things we hate to hear as tech advisors is, oh, I didn’t know you did that. I just signed a big deal with x y z. I woulda used you guys if I had known you did this solution. Well, this thing is designed to help you avoid those conversations.

So best practice, print it out. You can customize this with your logo, with your information, put it on it, and give it out to all of your clients and say, hey. If you need a help with anything on this list, give me a call. I’m your guy or girl as the case may be.

So definitely something we wanted to point out. We just put a lot of work into updating this, and we feel like it’s a pretty good list. So, alright, enough about that. Gonna dive into today’s content.

So, Leila, if you would go ahead and forward for me.

Market Opportunities in Video Analytics
Today, we are going to talk about the exciting world of video analytics. So video analytics is essentially using AI technology to analyze video streams for various purposes. So first thing I wanna point out is like anything with IoT, we see this up and to the right trend. Right? That’s why I love being in the space I’m in. Everything’s all about growth.

Twenty two point six billion dollar estimated market by twenty twenty eight with a twenty two point three percent compound annual growth rate between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty eight. So huge numbers are going to be in this space. A lot of dollars are going to be spent here. Thirty eight percent of that market share is here in North America. So massive, massive opportunity for us to get in there. These are obviously this is obviously one of the first things we look at when we wanna sort of dive into a technology is what’s the market opportunity?

Do people care about this technology? And I think the answer when you look at this is absolutely yes. This is something that everybody’s looking at. And then that last stat at the bottom is gonna be one that’s familiar to anybody who’s seen me give a presentation on IoT.

Ninety three percent of executives believe the benefits of IoT outweigh the risks. That’s from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a fairly well known, you know, research group. So definitely a stat that should jump out at us and make us pay attention. Ninety three percent. Almost all of them. And this video analytics is one of the things that they are looking at. So next slide, please, Leila.

Application of Video Analytics in Different Sectors
Alright. So let’s talk a little bit about who is looking at video analytics. Who cares? So first off, government. Right? Obviously, a tremendous increased focus on public safety these days.

We’ve had some recent events that I think illustrate that and and some of the details and stuff that are coming. But getting real time data for things like traffic flow, crowd control, crowd monitoring is very important for governments, municipalities, federal, state, you name it. So governments are really investing in this technology.

You see it with smart cities as well. There’s a lot of people that are doing it. And again, what this is is it’s a AI box that works with cameras, video cameras. It takes in those video streams and analyzes the data and gives us information.

Okay? So in a lot of cases, and we’ll dive into the individual solutions in a minute, but a lot of cases you can use existing cameras or provide new cameras. So wanted to sort of touch on that. I kinda skipped over that.

My bad.

Second, segment there. Transportation and logistics. So those of you who tuned in for our IoT fleet management bit, you know I talked quite a bit about this. But things like accident resolution, who’s at fault, that helps with insurance claims, and then, of course, influencing driver behavior.

These are all things that are part of the video analytics platform. In this case, applied to IoT fleet management, but same technology, same solution is doing the same thing. The drill, results in a very, significant decrease in insurance premiums and insurance claims paid by transportation and logistics companies. So this is something they are investing in heavily.

Number three, healthcare. Alright?

Patient monitoring, incident response, and asset management. Three areas that are very important to any kind of healthcare facility or healthcare professionals.

Monitoring patients. We’ve got, you know, cameras in rooms, in waiting rooms, monitoring what’s going on. If there’s an event, a medical event, we want staff on-site to be able to respond immediately. And so that is very, very important.

Incident response. So within a health care facility, everything from slip and fall to some kind of incident that happens, and, of course, these happen regularly within within hospitals. We have, you know, we want to be able to respond accordingly. And then this one’s pretty significant, asset management.

A lot of the equipment and devices in healthcare facilities are very, very expensive.

MRI machines, x rays, all these kind of things. And knowing where they are and when they, you know, to be able to access them is important. They move around. All of them are on wheels now.

So monitoring those assets and seeing where they are at all times is very important for health care. So next one, retail. This one also, retail is a big area that is heavily in computer vision. Things like heat maps.

Where are my customers going within the store? And if I know where they’re going, then I can position my merchandise accordingly.

Also things like loss prevention. Right? Looking for signs. Maybe somebody kind of milling around an area, you know, and being in there for a extended period of time, casing out the joint.

A lot of retail establishments are investing in this type of technology to prevent loss. It’s been a big deal. We’ve all seen the videos of people, raiding stores and stuff. This is some of the technology that they are looking at to try and mitigate that.

Slip and fall. Similar to what we see in the healthcare space and other spaces, but somebody falls within the store, not only do we wanna be able to respond accordingly and quickly, but we also want video of the image, of what happened of the incident. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, there’s a lot of fraudulent claims that happen, and it’s very important for retail establishments to be able to say, hey. No. The floor was not wet. You slipped on your own or something happened or, you know, for, for liability purposes.

And then this is a big one for both retail and other areas, people counting. Knowing how many people go in, how many people go out, and this is important both for checking numbers to see, hey. What kind of traffic are you getting with promotions or what have you in the retail space? But also for safety.

Right? If there’s a fire, knowing how many people went in and how many people went out and how many people we need to find within the building is very important. This has been a solution that’s been looked at not only by retail, but also things like churches. So if you’ve got large churches in a community, people counting, knowing where people are in, and any environment where you’ve got crowds showing up, being able to know how many have come and how many have gone in the event of an incident, Very, very important for first responders.

So let’s move on to the next slide here.

Market Share and Use Cases of Video Analytics
Here’s a quick, snapshot of the market share for each of these types of applications.

This was from last year. But you can see these are basically the use cases that businesses are using this technology for. So crowd management, theirs at about twenty percent. Largest one, facial recognition. So I know sometimes people see that and think big brother, but if you think about the safety applications for those kind of things, you’re a business, somebody has been terminated.

You don’t want them on the property. You want, you know, notification if that person reenters the property or comes in. These are kind of important things that businesses are looking at as they try to protect their most important assets, which of course is their people and their environment. Things like license plate recognition are big use cases.

Motion detection. Right? Let’s geofence an area. If somebody goes into that area, we wanna know.

And that can be important for protecting things like server rooms, you know, important assets, goods, those types of materials. We wanna know who is in that room, who’s coming and going from that room so that we can respond accordingly. And then, of course, right along those same lines, intrusion detection.

And then, traffic monitoring, item detection, people tracking, these are all the kind of things that we’ve been talking about. So let’s move on to the next slide here. All of this is great, Graeme. Cool story.

Benefits and Selling Points of Video Analytics
But how do I sell it? How do I engage my customers in this conversation? Right? And you guys have heard me say this before.

Businesses only care about two things, making money and saving money. So how do we tie these applications and these things that, you know, these, these, you know, technologies to p and l and money at dollars and cents. So number one, this is obvious one, reduced labor. Okay?

So if you’ve got a large security team, think about a retail environment, or if you’re a church or something like that, and you’re paying staff to act as security, this can reduce those costs by up to thirty percent. So significant. Also, let’s be honest, makes them much, much more effective. Right?

If you’ve got security staff patrolling an area, patrolling a building, they they are not everywhere at the same time, whereas this video analytics has eyes twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year, and can let them know when there’s an incident. Instead of just kind of patrolling and hoping to find one, they can respond accordingly. So not only reduction in cost, but much, much more effective.

Theft and loss prevention, this one is obvious. Obviously, retailers can shrink reduce shrinkage. I love how we call theft shrinkage in a lot of these cases, but reduce it by up to fifteen percent. So that is very significant.

You’re, you’re saving your goods by fifteen percent. And then, insurance premiums. You know, we talked about that a little bit when I did the IoT fleet management, but also in retail environments and, of course, with, fleet, reducing insurance premiums by ten percent, less loss, less claims, premiums go down. Right?

Makes sense. So these are some real dollar savings that we can show. And then this is one that marketing and CMOs love alike. Targeted marketing based on real data of behavior.

So if we can use this video analytics platform to monitor traffic flows, heat maps, those kind of things, We can improve things like checkout efficiency by up to twenty percent. We’ve all been in a line way too long where we’ve waited to buy something and finally just said, I’m out. I’m moving on. So if you could monitor that and make sure that you have staffing accordingly, you’re you’re putting your people in the right place to meet the needs of your customers.

That can increase, you know, customer efficiency by up to twenty percent. So very, very significant.

Engaging Customers in Video Analytics
Lots going on in this space and, obviously, a very cool area with lots going on. So what I wanna do here now, we move on to the next slide, is I’m gonna bring in our good friend, Skyler, from Epic. Io. Skyler, come on in and join me here. So these are a few slides that you guys put together. We’ve got a couple on a couple of different segments here that I wanna sort of talk through, but also just get your thoughts in general on computer vision and, data you know, video analytics and how you guys have really leaned into this technology heavily for Epic. Io.

You got it. You got it. And thanks, to Larry’s team and Graeme for for having me. So you explained it very well.

Right? When when computer vision is applied accurately, it is a proactive measure. Right? In our traditional space of cameras and analytics, provide some feature sets.

Right? But it’s typically you’re gonna get a lot of motion based alerts. You’re gonna, rewind the footage, give that to police, right, for theft and things like that. And then you have to surf through, you know, hours of footage to find, those anomalies or those incidents.

That is the whole point of computer vision is to be a proactive measure to look for the things and make those cameras intelligent. Look for the things that the customer wants to see from, store analytics, like you said, heat mapping, and things like that. So when applied accurately, especially in retail and let me back up. For the partners out there, it’s just a little bit of a different approach and a couple different questions.

So AI is everywhere. Right? It’s it’s the buzzword, but you can get so deep and wide with your customers and make them really, really sticky, by taking this approach. Right?

And it can start with something, very small and very, low dollar amount. Right? By just putting in, like, in retail for cold storage and putting in temperature sensors.

So you can start with a challenge, and that’s what I I would recommend, and I tell partners all the time, is really dive in and find that challenge. You’re not gonna find it on the IT bill. Right? But you’re gonna dive in with with operations marketing.

So, basically, you opened up the entire budget from an organization to go in there and find a challenge at a time. And I I say that because our customer growth, from the life of their contract is a hundred and seventy one percent growth. Right? We start with the challenge that we solve.

And then from there, the customer gets comfortable with it. The infrastructure is in place and the software, and then they call Skyler back and go, hey. Can you do that sensor for fill levels, or can you, apply this AI model in this area? Right?

So keep that in mind when when approaching customers.

But specifically to retail, Graeme, you kinda hit on that. Right? It’s heat mapping. I’ve got, you know, stories upon stories if I had more time. But, we, you know, we had a high end retailer, that their average sale was over a thousand dollars. Right? So the foot traffic was a little bit lower, but it was a higher sale.

So, basically, they launched a kid’s line of clothing, and they were having a challenge, really moving the kids’ lines of the product. Right? And so we put in our AI, right, and did heat mapping, and then also even put cameras in the window for window shoppers. Right?

Because they wanna know how many people are looking in the store but end up not coming in. Right? And so we apply those AI models, and now we’re able to put heat mapping where customers are gravitating towards a store, and we can even get as granular as the product that they’re thinking about picking. Right?

Just by geofencing that shelf with that product, you can then determine how many people entered, the dwell time, standing there deciding on which product, and then which product they actually took with a combination of AI and sensors. So you can get granular all the way down to the product level.

Yeah. And I think that kind of information is just gold for somebody who’s in marketing. Right? Obviously, to understand your customer’s behavior and what they’re doing, That is I mean, I know Jen Dimas on our team would love to hear that in in some of her previous roles.

I mean, just great information. We look at that stuff with our website traffic. Awesome. So, hey, Skyler, one thing I wanted to point out that I think you mentioned at the beginning, the the ability to search through footage.

Right? What what’s the stat? I think it’s how many hours within how many seconds. Do you have that off the top of your head where you can say, I wanna look for a guy, you know, Doug’s wearing a a a sort of black shirt with a with a taupe blazer.

That guy’s looking suspicious. I wanna point out every instance of that guy in the store, and you can go through hours of footage in seconds with computer vision by just queuing up that search term. Would have, you know, would take hours and hours to look through that footage manually, saves a ton of time for law enforcement and in areas where you’ve got loss prevention.

No. Spot on. Spot on. Yeah. I don’t have that stat, but it is a good one.

I’m gonna I’m gonna look through it.

Yeah. I I can’t remember. It’s at it’s at x number of seconds. But, anyways, let’s move on to the next slide. Talk about another little market segment there if we can. So we are going to look at Leila, if we could forward to the next slide.

AI in Construction
Construction. Alright.

I think this is a big area where a lot of people, you know, there’s a lot of stuff going on here especially around loss prevention, which we’ve talked about. But one of the things that’s really cool on this one from a safety standpoint is temperature monitoring. Right? You’ve got a lot of combustible materials on construction sites, and monitoring even a slight increase in temperature and alerting people on the site to what’s going on can literally save lives. So talk a little bit about that, Skyler, what you guys are doing in this space.

Absolutely. So in in addition to kind of the obvious, right, of site security, you’ve got copper expensive, material that that you need to proactively monitor, you know, during off hours. But when it comes to things like that, I’m a storyteller, so I love kinda telling stories and applying the technology to it. But we had a customer that, had combustibles in in the construct construction industry, and they were really trying to solve.

And they had a fire that completely took down their fleet, all of their progress on the construction site. So not only the loss of of their actual inventory, but just brand recognition, right, of having a fire. And so in meeting with the customer, we said, what if we could proactively detect heat indexes combined with a AI model for fire? So, basically, what we’ve done is is applied thermal cameras.

Right? And we can apply those to a trailer. You can do that on a static mounted pole.

But you can actually, with AI, put heat indexes in there. So if that temperature rises above seven hundred degrees, that that immediately starts sending off alerts, start strobe lights, loud speakers for the crew that’s on the ground, making sure that everyone shuts down, operations.

And we even took it a step further to where you can apply fire models. Right? We created an AI model that will detect the presence of fire by the naked eye. So now you’ve got multiple layers of confidence there from your heat indexes of thermal cameras with the fire model if it does combust, and then taking action from there with alerts, strobe lights, network speakers to make sure that, all of the employees and crew is safe.

Yeah. And and I think, again, so many companies are now looking at their people assets and and the importance we place on those and keeping those individuals safe on a job site and, of course, your materials as well. So this is a a a great thing that combines both of them.

So I think construction, we’ve got a lot of our tech advisers that work in this space. So you guys obviously come in there not only the ability to provide Internet short term for those kind of things through a lot of your five g and four g, you know, type solutions. But also these cameras, I think, is something that a lot of our tech advisors miss. They don’t have the conversation about this and bringing them in.

And one thing I wanna point out, I saw some questions here and we will get to questions in a minute. We’ve got a lot. But almost all of these solutions, yes, we can provide the cameras, but almost all of them, all you need are IP based cameras existing in the facility, and the computer vision boxes or models will take in those feeds. So you can use the existing infrastructure for almost every single one of the solutions we have in the portfolio.

AI in Healthcare
Now, of course, we will also sell them the cameras. Right? And better cameras lead to better results. However, as long as they have an I b IP based camera, this solution will work with it. So let’s look at our last industry that we’re going to forward on. Leila, if you’d forward yeah. Healthcare.

So I know a lot of our tech advisors work in the health care space. Tons of applications here. I talked about a few of them, but what really excites me about health care is what’s coming. Right? The integration of cameras with monitors on people where you can actually potentially predict health care events before they happen and save lives. So, Skyler, talk about some of the things you guys are doing there in the IoT space.

Absolutely. So, I mean, health care is huge. Right? So, whether that’s, you know, tier one type of hospitals or or, you know, know, smaller, family clinics.

But, when you think about a health care environment like you’re seeing here, you’ve got staff that has multiple jobs. They’re wearing multiple hats. Right? They’re taking care of patients, but also manually taking, you know, temperatures on their cold storage for their vaccines and medicines and manually writing things down and doing a lot of those operational things while trying to have patient care.

So, again, when you combine IoT and AI, you can assist the staff with monitoring the patient’s, basically, comfortability. Right? Some of the solutions that we put in place are combining AI with sensors on the hospital beds so that we can say, is that patient during the night uncomfortable? Are they rolling over a lot?

Have they gotten out of bed? How long have they gotten out of bed? Because if they’ve been, you know, out of bed for, say, thirty, forty five minutes in the middle of the night, that’s an anomaly, and that staff should know about it to make sure that that, patient is okay. And then you combine really making sure the health care equipment, right, with sensors and power sensors, patient monitoring, right, with the the example I set before.

And then you can go into efficiencies. Right? When I talk about the IoT sensors, and I know kind of the conversation here is computer vision, but when you combine sensors like the examples of, that I gave before, combining sensors with AI gives that a whole other solution set, that’s really unique. Right?

Like like I said, putting sensors underneath beds to monitor weight, and are they on or off the bed? You mentioned slip and fall. Right? So if that patient has gotten out of bed, we can actually detect the human posture of that body, whether they’re sitting, standing, or falling down, and if they’ve fallen down for how long, which immediately alerts, health care staff.

So when it comes to health care, definitely dive into the efficiencies, right, that you can apply with IoT and sensors and then augmenting or assisting staff, with patient care because, again, they’re they’re wearing multiple hats.

Yeah. I I think and and, you know, folks, we we you know, because of time, we’re only able to really cover a few areas that this technology is making, you know, some huge strides. But one thing you wanna point out is all of these are staff augmentation technologies, right, where you’re taking staff and what they can do and the limitations they have with their time and making them more efficient. So think of the example Skyler just shared.

Health care, you know, professionals can’t be anywhere. Somebody falls in the room, that only gets detected when a nurse does their rounds. Well, now you can have almost a nurse there twenty four seven with some of these sensors or in memory care facilities where people are wandering out of their rooms into the halls and things like that. Knowing about that before a nurse is doing their rounds and finds a patient patient missing, huge.

Right? Makes a massive thing. And these are the kind of things that families wanna see in these facilities, and hospitals, and and the like are investing in it. So, we do wanna sort of open things up to some questions here now.

I know we’ve got a lot going on. This is a really cool technology. We didn’t get a chance to really dive deep into traffic monitoring. We didn’t get a chance to dive deep into some of the smart cities.

Compliance and Regulatory Considerations
So many applications here. We’ll try to probably touch some of that in the questions. But, Doug, what do we got out there? What do we got in the questions today?

Quite a few from partners as you mentioned. Let’s start with health care because we just finished with that example.

We can relate this to other areas as well, but what are some of the compliance issues that users have to worry about with this technology, and are the things that they have to set up on the front end if they’re in health care or other areas that may be heavily regulated or have compliance restrictions?

No. Good question. So, I mean, one thing from the camera aspect, and that’s a stance that we’ve taken, which was, NDAA compliance, which is National Defense Authorization Act, which basically bans, from the government and the US government any, Chinese, China chipsets in cameras. Right?

Just for privacy reasons. That puts the health care, the customer’s organization at risk as well as, EPIX or any any AI provider. So starting there, with making sure that the cameras are secure.

And then from a compliance stand standpoint, if there’s issues with, say, network, right, and they don’t want IoT, we hear that all the time, IoT or or cameras on, the health care’s network, that’s great. We are also a wireless five g provider, where we can separate that off of the network if there’s any security issues or concerns from from the customer standpoint. But when it comes to compliance, you do need to look at those depending on the the type of facility, but I would definitely start at kind of those two base levels.

And then if there’s certain requirements, I’m sure, Epic or, you know, any other provider in the Telarus portfolio will have you covered there.

Yeah. I mean, in obvious privacy concerns with cameras and rooms and things like that, that’s why you tend to sort of look at a a sensor in those types of scenarios.

Things like facial recognition, there’s a lot of, laws and things put in place as far as what can and can’t be used. So you definitely it is very specific to your geography.

So you definitely have to know where you are and and that’s, you know, along with audio recordings. So you do have to ask those questions and find out, But all of the providers in our portfolio are going to be aware of what they can and can’t do based on the geography they’re in. So, definitely a question you need to ask though. Very, very good one.

Protecting the Integrity of Data
Another question that comes up, and it’s a bit ironic, but the same technologies that allow this type of analytics to operate can be used to, destroy the integrity integrity of that video and other evidence as well. What sort of things are going on in the industry right now to help protect the integrity of the evidence and the analytics that is gathered?

No. Another another great question. So I I would, definitely, you know, caution or or recommend when you’re working with an AI company that when they’re training their models, they’re not using third parties.

They’re not using video from their existing customers or sending out AI models to different third parties, which creates risk with that. Right? You wanna make sure that they have their own private cloud. And depending on if it’s a, you know, a direct to cloud model or a hybrid model, you definitely wanna make sure that the AI company is keeping the video, and it’s the customers.

Right? It is not the AI’s providers. They should not be training it on third party platforms or releasing that video to anybody else. The data is the customers, and it always will be.

That’s the way it should be.

Yeah. And just to build on that, that’s one of the things we look for when we vet these suppliers in our portfolio is making sure that, you know, the integrity of that data is taken care of. However, the customer also has some responsibility to make sure that that network is safe and they are putting in place protections. And, of course, we all know our good friend Jason Stein talks a lot about that. So lots of things there. All of these technologies go hand in hand. Securing the data, all that kind of stuff is just as important as, as collecting it.

International Opportunities
So Absolutely.

We put the link to the technology solution map in the chat, so partners are welcome to take a look at that and see where some of this fits. Graeme Schuyler, as we look at these technologies, are we primarily still looking because of regulatory and other concerns at a domestic market for these sales, or are there suppliers and opportunities that we work with that would be considered international as well?

There’s definitely international opportunities. Just speaking from EPIC standpoint, we’ve got, staff and customers in Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico.

So, again, based on country, right, is we’re gonna run into some either compliance issues or things like that. But, definitely in, UK, things like that where we’re we have customers, it’s definitely a global opportunity. There’s more cameras, in the world than there is a human population. So, as long as we can service that, get connectivity there and and our models, we’ll we’ll definitely go across the pond.

Yeah. And just to build on that, Skyler, I think, hit the most important point. Right? Your what you can do is going to change very much based on the geography, so you gotta know that.

But, you know, Claro is one of the providers in our portfolio that also does this. Big player in South America, obviously. Right? So we’ve got opportunity there.

We’ve got, a lot of international opportunities going on with this technology. So yeah.

Implementing Video Analytics Technology
You mentioned earlier that this works, of course, with existing IP based cameras. Are there other prerequisites or considerations that a client should look at before trying to implement video analytics technology, or could this be done at at the start of what will be a longer term and greater growing, security and related issues project?

Sure. And so when it comes to the the cameras, like I said, the NDAA compliance, and then as Greg mentioned too, as long as we can grab the stream from the camera, we we can reuse that infrastructure. So that’s definitely a value when customers are looking at applying this type of intelligence to their existing cameras, and And then we don’t have to forklift that out. But as Graeme mentioned, we can obviously, provide those cameras as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Just to build on that, I think the the most common scenario we see is sometimes, customers will add incremental cameras. Right?

Maybe there’s a use case or something they wanna capture today that they’re not set up to capture. So adding cameras is is kind of a a very common scenario. And important to note, even if it’s an IP based camera, the better the camera, the better the efficiency, and the better result from the, computer vision model. So, you know, if you’ve got old cameras that have very poor resolution, you’re limiting the ability of this technology to to act on that.

So important to know, the customer can use their existing infrastructure, but they may not want to based on, what they’ve got. So Good point.

Revenue Model for AI Solutions
From the adviser standpoint in terms of how they’re presenting and selling this, are they looking at these sales as being a generator of monthly recurring revenue, or are most of the, revenue opportunities maybe a onetime upfront type charge?

We we’re typically actually just, an OPEX model just like most of, the providers in the portfolio. So whether we’re supplying cameras, edge compute at the at the edge, sensors, that’s all gonna be rolled in monthly. We we do CapEx as well, so we’re flexible on based on the customer’s budget and buying cycles. So, definitely a reoccurring model.

Potential Growth and ROI
And the I’ll tell you, like I mentioned at the beginning, they could start as small as, you know, five hundred bucks a month, for a single use case, but the growth potential is huge. Right? Because there are so many different scenarios and use cases that can be provided to the customer. And one thing that I I didn’t touch on is definitely, you know, the ROI aspect of it.

If you go to a customer and say, hey. We’re gonna do slip and fall, or we’re gonna do license plate recognition. They might not know what that means to their business. So taking that extra step and really putting together an ROI for the customer, I think is valuable.

We’ve learned that over the years, within the adviser channels to really put that model together and show them the immediate return on that. And when you do, like I mentioned, that customer growth, is substantial.

Yeah.

I think that ROI piece goes back to that cool story, bro, slide I had where, you know, really translating the value of this into dollars and cents for the business.

So so key. So very key. So yeah. Definitely.

Licensing and Commissions
Last point on the commissions. The way all of these are priced is based on what’s called a use case. So for example, weapons detection is one use case, fire prevention may be a second use case, and sometimes those can be bundled together. But it’s essentially a monthly license for that use case. So the computer vision component is almost exclusively paid on a monthly recurring revenue basis.

Cost Structure and Vertical Markets
Cameras, upfront cost typically, although a lot of providers will roll that into an OpEx as, as Skyler said.

There were a lot of, questions and comments about the different sort of verticals. Some we discussed, others that, some of our advisers happen to be involved with. But I think it’s safe to say that securing physical environments is probably critical to organizations regardless of the vertical that they’re in.

Generic Client Presentation and Site Security
Seems to me that the presentation to clients could be fairly generic regardless of the vertical that they’re involved in and more importantly focused on the needs that they have. Any tips, Skyler or Graeme, that you would offer to our advisers trying to begin this conversation?

No. And that’s a good point. Right? It it the umbrella effect here is definitely site security.

Either customer has cameras, needs cameras, or has risk of theft, vandalism, and things like that. So that touches all verticals, which means that opens up, an entire market for your entire customer base on having that conversation. And even again, kinda going back to my point on where to start, you can have a multilocation customer that might have a hodgepodge, and piece together camera system. Right?

Consolidation and Future Roadmap
They might have Bosch here, access, different logins, just consolidating all of that into a single pane of glass and a single BMS platform, and a user experience right there is is a win. Right? We hear so many times of the struggles of of having multiple logins and some cameras failing, and and and it’s just pieced together by having an end to end single solution and a single pane of glass just starting there, is it definitely an easy conversation to have. And then from there, you can say, hey.

We’ve got these other AI models and things so that the customer knows the future state, and you can almost lay a road map for the customer. Right? Let’s start here. And then once we get the infrastructure, the cameras consolidated, now we can start looking at this challenge and this challenge and really lay a road map of revenue for you as a partner, throughout that relationship.

Universal Technology and Use Cases
Yeah. And just and just to build on that, I think, you know, like, this is a universal, technology, right, that can be applied to any industry, as you said, Doug. I think that’s a really great shout out. The use cases that are gonna be applicable to the different industries may vary, but there’s something in here for everyone.

We even have examples of physical security issues or lack of physical security creating cybersecurity incidents. For example, a casino had a drone land on the roof of a casino, access a network port, and create a cyber incident, you know, that can be prevented by geofencing and saying, hey. If there’s any traffic on this roof, there shouldn’t be. We need to know about it.

It. So couple things like that, very universal. What’s gonna change is the use cases. And a lot of times within your customers, this is this is where it comes down to knowing what’s going on within your customers.

Identifying Incidents and Scenarios
Sometimes you’re looking for an incident, something that happened. Right? Might not be IT related. Could be if an incident where there was an accident or, slip and fall or a death or something, and that can sometimes be the impetus for having the conversation and creating, a scenario that they could really benefit from.

Fantastic. Guys, we’re running short on time. I’m gonna have to let it go there, but, both Graeme and Skyler will stay on the chat window. If you have additional questions or or comments you’d like to address to them, feel free to put them in the chat. We’ll get you some additional responses before the call ends today.

Skyler, thank you so much for being here. Graeme, last word to you.

Final Remarks on Business Opportunities
Yeah. No. This is a great technology, folks, and a nice incremental piece of business that you can get from your customers. A lot of the things I talk about, right, live outside of that IT silo. So sometimes you’re gonna have to talk to somebody that’s not in IT to have a conversation about this, but great incremental business for you to continue to monetize your relationships. Thanks, Doug.

Thank you, guys. Terrific presentation.

Boy, growing up, I just wanted to be on TV when I grew up. I had no idea that I’d be on TV all the time.

Introduction of AT&T Business Wi-Fi
Mom says always act as if you were on TV because you probably are. Hey. Today’s next presentation is from AT and T here with valuable information on the AT and T business Wi Fi with Cisco Meraki offering and an exclusive opportunity for Telarus Advisors. Joining us today is our friend, Alexandria Hubert, national channel director at AT and T. Alex, we’re so glad to have you back on the Tuesday call.

Thanks for having me, Doug, and thanks for inviting me,