16 Oct 2006

COE Group plc, the developer and supplier of advanced video surveillance systems, and Agent Video Intelligence™ Inc., the global leader in enterprise-grade video analytics, today announce that COE has integrated Agent Vi’s patented video analysis range into COE’s X-NET MPEG-4/MJPEG codec platform.  This will enable COE to offer its customers the option of additional video intelligence across its core products.
 
COE believes that this application will be particularly relevant for the transport security market as it can be easily integrated into CCTV systems in transport infrastructure to intelligently monitor and analyse activity and data from on-board CCTV cameras.  The huge increase in available video combined with headcount constraints in operation centres are driving an increased need for automatic detection of suspicious events rather than relying on human monitoring.  The market for software to analyse video content is forecast to grow at an annual rate of 64% from now to 2010, reaching US$616M, according to data from IMS Research.  Most of this value will be embedded in network edge devices such as codecs.
 
Andrew Wallace, CEO of COE, said: “We are delighted to be able to expand our offering in transport security market as we are seeing increasing levels of interest from customers in this area as demand for passenger security and safety intensifies.  AgentVi’s excellent architecture and engineering skills made them an easy choice for COE.  We have worked with them for several months and we believe that this will move COE’s systems a major leap forward.  COE’s approach of partnering with the best technologists and adopting open platforms is again paying off with rapid time to market.”
 
Today’s announcement marks an important milestone in the evolution of video analytics", stated Dieter Kondek, President and CEO of Agent Vi.  “With the addition of our IPoIP distributed image processing architecture, COE is offering extremely sophisticated and intelligent codecs with all the benefits of leading-edge video analysis capabilities minus the expense of network infrastructure and additional field hardware to its customers in key transportation markets (traffic management, transport and passenger monitoring, mass transit system and transportation infrastructure).”

The systems were demonstrated at the Essen show in Germany last week.