Latin America. One trend is continued interest in how AI will be applied and Axis Communications has highlighted several aspects that will need to be addressed this year.
"Once again, we have reached the time of year when we look to the future for some of the technology trends that will impact the security industry over the next 12 months. The speed of changeover is faster than ever. Some of the trends are evolutions of those we have seen in previous years. Others are new or even a resurgence of topics that we may not have paid attention to for a while," the company noted.
Hybrid solutions: the foundation of freedom of choice
In previous years, Axis has highlighted how hybrid architectures, those that make the best use of edge technologies (cloud and on-premises), have become the de facto choice for security solutions.
The factors that decide architectural choices will be unique to each organization, taking into account technological, legal, ethical, and governance concerns and requirements. The environment evolves rapidly, so freedom of choice is imperative.
Hybrid solutions offer freedom of choice for storing video, viewing video, managing devices, and more.
Whether required by emerging local and regional regulations or concerns about data control, cost, or energy efficiency, hybrid solutions will continue to offer the most flexibility in creating architectures that best fit each organization's specific needs and allow a system to scale.
Evolving AI while improving its efficiency
Development in the field of AI continues to advance. Deep learning technologies are the foundation of most analytics solutions in the security industry, while newer generative AI technologies are maturing rapidly. There's still a lot of buzz in certain areas, but there are more and more real-world applications of generative AI in the security sector. Each step of evolution brings with it a new set of opportunities, but also ethical, legal, and corporate considerations.
Generative AI models are large and computationally intensive to run, creating a debate about how to balance the cost of AI (both in terms of financial investment and energy use and environmental impact) with its value. A great deal of effort is being made to reduce the size of the models while maintaining the quality of the results. The increased use of AI technologies reinforces hybrid architectures as standard.
The various "flavors" of AI, from deep learning-based object recognition to generative AI, demand or benefit from its application in different locations along the value chain and in specific environments. Generative AI can help operators interact with security solutions in natural language, but, at least in the near future, it will require significant processing power. In contrast, deep learning-based analytics, such as enhanced object recognition, can be run within the surveillance cameras themselves.
The future of security becomes a reality
The application of increasingly advanced computer vision, audio, access control, and other connected technologies continues to serve safety and security use cases. Greater accuracy of analytics through the application of AI, especially in object recognition, means that incidents can be responded to faster and more effectively than before.
What is also clear is that the data generated by sensors of all kinds (video, audio, environmental, etc.) can benefit numerous use cases beyond the traditional ones. Although it remains a relatively small share of the market, an acceleration of applications aligned with operational efficiency and business intelligence is expected. This trend emphasizes opportunities for greater collaboration between customer organizations. Technology that is purchased or specified for a use case could be used in another area of a company's operations.
Thanks to the high-quality hardware platforms available, the pace of development and innovation is astounding. Hardware vendors that foster an open and collaborative ecosystem of application developers and system integrators will bring more value to customers faster.
The "renaissance" of image quality
It can be counterintuitive to suggest that a focus on image quality is a trend in the industry, where many would assume that it has always been a priority (and this is true). The trend is how images from visual sensors are used and, with it, the greater opportunities offered by having better image quality.
The paradigm shifts when we consider that images are now usually initially viewed and analysed by computers rather than humans, and that images are viewed continuously, rather than when an incident of interest has occurred.
Advances in analytics and AI mean that a higher resolution image inevitably generates a better result, whatever the use case. Object recognition will be more accurate and more detailed data (and metadata) will be created. The drive towards even better image quality has been revived.
With this has arisen opportunities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. A single camera producing much higher image quality can now cover an area that would have previously required multiple cameras. Higher resolution images are also supported for analytics, for example, in large crowds, busy traffic junctions, or fast-moving production lines.
The long-term value of products comes from software support
In the upper echelon of the security industry, the quality of hardware has improved year after year. Today, hardware devices can be of such high quality, especially in terms of performance and capabilities, that expectations about their lifespan are higher than ever.
But while quality hardware can last for many years, as illustrated by the length of warranties, the defining factor of a camera's functionality, including cybersecurity and therefore its lifetime value, comes through the software's ongoing assistance.
Vendor commitments to software support throughout the expected lifetime of the hardware are essential; software that continues to improve and develop the camera's capabilities, and keep it as secure as possible. This also supports the total cost of ownership of the hardware. An investment in a better quality camera, with comprehensive software support throughout its lifecycle, will ultimately be a more effective and efficient solution.
Technological autonomy for the benefit of the customer
Ultimately, our role, and that of our partner ecosystem, is to focus on meeting customer needs. Technology itself doesn't do much: innovations need to align with end-user priorities. This clearly means supporting customers' goals for security, operational efficiency, and business intelligence. But it also means supporting their cybersecurity posture, commitment to sustainability through energy-efficient solutions, and flexibility and freedom of choice thanks to technologies and platforms based on open standards.
Technology providers with more autonomy over their core technologies are clearly in the best position to respond to their customers' requirements. Greater control over core technology, from silicon "upwards," will allow a vendor to design specific capabilities and functionalities aligned with customer needs in their products. This approach to ownership of core technology will also enable a supplier to deliver on the commitment to be "safe by design."
In addition, greater control of technology, at the component or even material level, is an important prerequisite for more effectively mitigating the risks of wider disruption of global supply chains. This improves the ability to meet customer requirements at the right time.
We are already seeing companies that were traditionally seen as software providers designing their own semiconductors gaining more control over the delivery of their services, especially in the area of AI, and this trend is projected to continue across industries.
"Independence from core technology is a trend that we are proud to say we are a little ahead of, as we have developed our own system-on-chip, ARTPEC, over the past 25 years," concluded Axis.
