Intelligent video analytics
For the cameras you already have
Most organisations own cameras that record and nothing else. Intelligent video analytics reads the footage as it happens: somebody has fallen, a door was forced after hours, four hundred people came through the entrance this morning. Ericom supplies it, integrates it and runs it onshore.
What it watches for
One platform, three groups of capability. Most customers start with the group where they already feel the problem and add the others once the video is earning.
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Security
Protecting people, assets and places, so an intrusion or an incident can be raised while it is happening, before anyone has to find it on a recording.
- Intrusion and after-hours detection
- Asset and infrastructure protection
- Incident detection and response
- Access control
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Safety
The wellbeing of the people in and around a site, including the ones no operator is watching at the time.
- Person down and fall detection
- Child protection and supervision
- Public safety monitoring
- Weapons and duress detection
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Operational efficiency
Turning video into operational data, and into hours somebody no longer spends watching or searching it.
- People counting and occupancy
- Rapid forensic search
- Process and compliance verification
- Flow and utilisation analytics
Recording is not the same as knowing
Most camera environments were bought to answer questions after something happened, and that is all they do. The feeds go unwatched, because watching them is not a job a person can hold for a shift. The footage is opened when there is an incident, someone spends an afternoon scrubbing through it, and the storage bill arrives every month whether anything is learnt from it or not. Meanwhile the things a camera could have told you at the time, that a door was open, that somebody was on the floor, that the queue has not moved in ten minutes, went unsaid.
The consequence is carried twice. Once by whoever the incident happened to, because the response started when it was reported and not when it began. And once by the organisation afterwards, when the footage has to establish what happened, who had access to it and how long it was kept, and the last two were never decided. Cameras that only record add obligations at the same rate as footage.
The equipment is rarely the problem. Nothing is reading the video.
What Ericom adds
The platforms are available to anyone. The difference is which one gets chosen, how it is put together, and who is accountable for it in year three.
Leads with
Supplied as one thing
Cameras, infrastructure, software and analytics supplied as one solution and answered for by one party, instead of four suppliers who each point at the others. We select it, integrate it and operate it.
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Not tied to one vendor
The platform is chosen per site against what that site needs. Every vendor in the stack earns a specific job, and none of them is the answer to everything.
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Onshore, your infrastructure or ours
Data residency is a decision made at design and written down. On premise, hybrid or cloud, depending on what you are obliged to do and what it costs.
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Privacy and compliance built in
Collection, purpose, access, retention and notice to the people it watches, settled at design with a privacy specialist. On camera projects this is what stalls deployments, so it is done before it becomes an objection.
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Installed and maintained locally
Local partners do the physical work, so a failed camera is replaced by somebody who can drive to it.
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Someone owns the outcome
Supplied, installed, managed, monitored, and reviewed against what it was bought to deliver. Most camera projects fail quietly at that last step.
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ANPR on the cameras you have
Automatic number plate recognition reads plates at gates, car parks and loading docks, and it runs as an analytics layer on the camera estate you already have. Lighting, camera angle and vehicle speed at each lane determine whether an existing camera can do it, which is one of the things the first review establishes.
You set the policy. We build to it.
Video is the most sensitive data most organisations hold and the easiest to collect more of than anyone intended. Ericom does not decide what you monitor, who can see it, or how long it is kept. Those are your decisions and your accountability. Our job is to make them decisions that were taken deliberately and written down, and to build a deployment that does what the policy says it does.
The platform
- Milestone
- On-premise core video management, for enterprise environments. Ericom is a Milestone Authorized Partner and a certified VMS Specialist; the accreditation is issued and renewed by Milestone.
- Genetec
- The cloud and hybrid platform we lead with. Onshore data residency, and the deeper workflows where footage is shared with other agencies.
- iPro
- Cameras and the analytics layer, across every platform. Detection runs at the edge.
- Verkada
- All-in-one cloud, for a smaller site that wants one box and one bill.
- NX Witness
- Retained for edge deployments where a full platform is more than the site needs.
- Wasabi
- Surveillance cloud storage, for sites where server and storage cost is the pressure and the cameras are not.
- Privacy and compliance
- Handled at design with a specialist privacy partner, on every platform in this list.
Accredited on the platform we build on
Ericom is a Milestone Authorized Partner and a certified VMS Specialist. The accreditation covers the video management platform. Milestone issues it and renews it; we hold it.
What this is, and what it is not
Video projects get bought under scrutiny, so it is worth being exact about the edges before somebody else draws them.
What it does
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The whole solution
Cameras, infrastructure, platform and analytics, supplied and integrated as one thing with one party accountable for it working.
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Works at one camera
A single entrance counted, or one bridge watched for flooding, is a complete deployment and not a pilot you have to grow out of.
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Runs where you need it
On premise, hybrid or cloud, onshore, on your infrastructure or ours.
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Stays after go-live
Monitored, maintained and reviewed against the outcome it was bought for. Go-live starts the service; it does not end the project.
What it does not do
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Not a camera refresh
New hardware changes what you own, not what you know. If cameras need replacing, that is one line item inside a larger job.
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Not one vendor's product
It is not a single platform sold under our name. That is a different purchase, with a different cost to leave.
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Not our decision what you monitor
We do not set your surveillance policy, choose what is watched, or decide retention. We build to the policy, and we will say so when the policy is unclear.
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Not our analytics
The detection models come from the camera and platform vendors. What Ericom does is choose the right ones, make them work together, and operate them. We would rather say that than imply we built them.
Where it is deployed
The capability is the same in each. What changes is the problem, the person who owns it, and the obligations attached to the footage.
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Local government
Councils and the communities they serve. Public space, infrastructure and assets, and the movement data that evidences a place investment or a grant. Delivered as CivicVision.
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Commercial property and strata
Incident review across a portfolio instead of a building, and tying an event to a tenancy without an afternoon of scrubbing through footage.
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Childcare and early learning
Supervision and child protection, with access and retention governed tightly enough to satisfy a regulator and a parent asking the same question.
Where this usually starts
A conversation first, and what it turns up decides which of these makes sense. There is no fixed order.
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A review of the cameras you have
For anyone who already owns cameras. What is actually working, what the storage and server footprint costs, and which of the capabilities above your existing hardware could already deliver.
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A privacy and compliance review
For sites where the obstacle is not the technology but whether a deployment can be defended. Worth doing on its own, and it usually has to happen before anything else can.
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A scoped proof of value
One entrance, one yard, one named problem. The right choice when the question is whether the analytics tell you anything you did not already know.
Common questions
Short answers first.
Is this just CCTV with a new name?
No, and the difference is commercial rather than semantic. CCTV records so footage exists if something happens. This produces data continuously whether or not anything happens: counts, detections, alerts. The cameras may well be the same hardware. What comes out of them is not the same thing.
Whose AI is it?
The camera and platform vendors'. Detection models are built by the people who build the cameras and the video platforms, and a great deal of the work happens on the camera itself. Ericom does not write them and does not claim to. What we do is choose which combination fits a site, make them work together, and run them, which is the part that usually determines whether any of it delivers.
Do we have to replace our cameras?
Usually not all of them. The first step is establishing what is working and what your existing hardware can already support. Replacement comes out of that review; it is not where the review starts.
Can we start with one camera?
Yes, and it is often the sensible way in. A single camera acting as a sensor for one specific purpose is a complete deployment. Scale is something the result makes available, not a condition of starting.
Where do the footage and the data live?
Onshore, and where exactly is your decision. On your own infrastructure, cloud or private cloud, or hosted by Ericom. Residency is settled at design, so it is decided once and not discovered later.
Who can see it?
Whoever your policy says, and the platform is configured to enforce that instead of relying on it. Where footage is shared with another organisation, access is controlled and the trail is recorded, so who saw what and when is a matter of record.
How is privacy handled?
As part of the design, with a specialist privacy partner. We do not set your policy on what is monitored or how long it is kept, but we will not build something you cannot explain to the people it watches.
Can it read number plates?
Yes. ANPR is one of the analytics we run, and it works on the cameras you already have: a plate at a gate can be matched against a list you control, logged as a vehicle movement, or raised as an alert. Whether a particular camera is positioned to read plates reliably comes out of the first review, because lane geometry, vehicle speed and night lighting matter more here than the camera's specification.
What your cameras could already tell you
An hour, no obligation, and an honest read on whether the cameras you already have can tell you something useful: the door left open, the person on the floor, the count that would evidence a grant. If they cannot, we will say that too.
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