Videtics - A startup that develops AI analysis tools for video surveillance.

Videtics – Accelerated Deep Learning video analytics for safety and mobility

Videtics is a startup developing AI analysis tools for video surveillance. Videtics offers a software suite that facilitates the protection of people and property, decision making and post-investigation using existing video cameras on customers’ sites. The aim is to generate real-time warnings and statistical data so that infrastructure admins can anticipate and counteract the risks the system shows. Videtics is an important and aspiring SME. The three founders all graduated from the University of Applied Sciences, getting to know each other at the 2018 SophIA Summit. Convinced of the potential for innovation in the video surveillance industry, the company was born.

Project details.

Services

Software

Industry

Trade / Service

Manufacturer

Nvidia

Company size

< 250 employees

The Videtics team.

From left to right:

Pierre-Alexis Le Borgne
(Head of Research),

Caroline Crouzet-Zucconi,
(Head of Marketing and Sales)

Alan Ferbach (CEO),

Alexandre Reboul (CTO)

Security solutions are on the uprise and more and more security cameras are being installed in France. This also means that an increasing amount of video data needs to be processed and analysed. A task that is too big to be handled manually.

And this is where technology comes into play, and AI will play a strategic role. The Videtics software package is equipped with deep learning functions that enable the extraction, analysis and evaluation of information from CCTV footage. The system can be used to detect accidents, pedestrians on tracks, etc.

In late 2020, Videtics, procured its latest IT acquisition, a Nvidia DGX station for its headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, with the help of IT partner Bechtle France.

Interview between Aline Gauthier, HPC Consultant Specialist at Bechtle France and Alan Ferbach, CEO of Videtics.

Aline Gauthier

Alan Ferbach

Aline Gauthier: Videtics and Bechtle have been working together for almost a year now. What an adventure!

Alan Ferbach: Indeed! Our co-operation has been based on our shared partner, Nvidia. We got in touch with Nvidia because we were looking to get Nvidia T4 GPU graphics cards to configure our training server and we were directed to Bechtle and Aline,

which was lucky, as you were able to help us out both with our training server as well as our computing and Inference servers and will be supporting us in the future too. We had a customer location with about 50 security and thermal cameras with data that needed to be analysed, and this required a server. In addition to the special requirements on site, we also needed a lot of power. That’s where Aline stepped in to help us with his knowledge.

Aline: That’s right! And we owe it all to Nvidia! One thing that I can’t forget about, when I think about how our business relationship started out, is how much was communicated between our HPC / IA teams and yours. We were able to bundle our experiences: yours, which was priming servers for computing power, and ours, which is our experience in using AI for video analysis.

This is why we recommended a solution that is built around a rack, soundproof and actively cooled so that it can be integrated into a standard customer environment (office etc.). And in regards to your premises, the Nvidia V100 generation DGX station is the ideal solution.

Alan: It’s thanks to these modular solutions that we can really see a difference between before and after procurement. With Aline and Bechtle’s expertise, we were able to configure servers that fit our application scenarios perfectly. V100 cards were used for the learning phase, and for the inference phase, Bechtle confirmed and validated our original choice of Nvidia Tesla T4 cards. Aline Gauthier Alan Ferbach And, above all, the Nvidia DGX station provides data centre level performance without requiring any further IT infrastructure.

We got the station in late 2020 and have noticed how our 6 employees are using regularly. And we even decided to go one step further, in extending our business relationship with you and Bechtle.
We will soon be providing a server with a Nvidia card of the newest generation: the GPU A100 with 40 GB of integrated storage, 25% more than the V100, directly at the customer’s premise. This way, Videctics can teach their customers live, which will increase confidentiality and the security of customer data.

Aline: In France, there are very few SMBs with only a handful of employees, like Videtics, that are investing in this kind of product, but its a huge benefit for them. It provides them with enormous agility and computing power you wouldn’t find elsewhere.

I had never sold a DGX station to a company with a business model like Videtics before, but they really are a great case study. It provides clear and objective proof that HPC and AI are not only something for large internationals and that Bechtle is capable of suiting services to all company sizes. It's important to say, however, that the right support is crucial for success.

Alan: It’s all of these elements that allow us larger scalability. When we got in touch, we needed help with this specific topic. And thanks to our intensive exchange, we were able to build up more experience in this particular area. And now we’ve deepened our knowledge, it’s really helping our customers even more.

Aline: The whole Bechtle/Videtics story proves that companies don’t need an army of engineers. Just good products that have been developed and optimised for real needs. Time is pressing and, sadly, we have to stop the interview here, but there’s one more thing I’d like to say and that is that Videtics expertise in AI is allowing us to grow and that Bechtle too is contributing to our growth and success.

Technical configuration:

AI server inside a soundproof rack for a Videtics customer
Basic hardware: Supermicro for the Server and Ucoustic for the array
DGX station / model with 4 GPU Nvidia V100
And soon: a new AI server with the new Nvidia A100