VisualCortex and Firmus announce alliance, make sustainable computer vision attainable for Australian organisations

Video Intelligence Platform provider, VisualCortex, teams-up with Firmus' Supercloud to make enterprise-wide visual computing initiatives environmentally and economically sustainable for clients across Australia

SYDNEY and LAUNCESTON, Australia, Aug. 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- VisualCortex, the Video Intelligence Platform connecting computer vision's potential to real-world business outcomes, has partnered with Firmus, builders of Supercloud – Australia's first sovereign (in-country) computational cloud that is good for the planet.

The partnership will make large-scale video analytics environmentally sustainable and commercially achievable. Supercloud, powered by Firmus' immersion cooled data centre in Tasmania, enables VisualCortex and its clients to perform compute-exhaustive machine learning workloads, while future-proofing its carbon footprint.

The partnership delivers three core outcomes:

• A dedicated VisualCortex R&D environment on Supercloud, enabling the vendor to train more computer vision models, in less time, while producing fewer CO₂ emissions
• A referral agreement, enabling VisualCortex to offer Supercloud's hosting services to its current and future clients at discounted rates
• A second referral agreement allowing Firmus to recommend VisualCortex's Video Intelligence Platform to partners and clients at discounted rates.

VisualCortex CEO and Co-Founder, Patrick Elliott, said that the VisualCortex - Firmus alliance would play an important role towards enabling its vision for the video analytics market.

"At VisualCortex, our mission is to make video data actionable throughout the enterprise," said Elliott. "Our Video Intelligence platform makes it technologically and financially possible to pervasively scale computer vision programs. At the same time, we fully acknowledge that computer vision requires significant GPU processing power. Supercloud, powered by Firmus, provides an ideal solution to address this challenge for VisualCortex and our clients."

A recent paper from Cornell University highlighted that training artificial intelligence models in traditional data centre environments can emit over 626,000 pounds – or 284,000 kilograms – of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. For context, that's almost five times greater than that produced by an average American car over its lifetime. Supercloud's immersion cooled approach will enable VisualCortex to reduce emissions produced from model training by around 50 percent.

"As our clients produce and share more video-based insights, they too will want options for reducing cloud compute costs and the impact on the environment," said Elliott. "Supercloud can help them achieve both outcomes, playing an important role in sustainably fulfilling our ambition to make video analytics accessible to more organisations and more decision-makers within those organisations."

Firmus and Supercloud CEO, Tim Rosenfield, said that the partnership was an easy decision to make, given the company's complementary missions.

"VisualCortex is taking video analytics mainstream," said Rosenfield. "Because its Video Intelligence Platform can facilitate any video analytics use case, across any number of video cameras and streams, it's easy to see how it's going to expedite enterprise-wide computer vision deployments, thereby substantially increasing demand for high-performance GPU cloud compute.

"As Australia's low-carbon, secure and sustainable AI computational cloud, Supercloud is ideally placed to support VisualCortex and its clients on that journey. Supercloud is built from the ground up to deliver powerful AI, ML and Visual Computing instances and tools in greater volume, at a lower cost and with less CO₂ emitted per hour than anything else in the market today.

"Supercloud's 'Sustainable Computer Engine' delivers access to NVIDIA's world-leading GPUs, including the A100s for deep learning and A40s for visual computing; on top of a flexible AI/ML stack and frameworks – enabling companies like VisualCortex to do more, with less."

Supercloud delivers an alternative cloud platform, ideal for facilitating the high-performance and resource-intensive machine learning workloads that underpin visual computing applications. Firmus' fluid-based cooling system (a biodegradable, non-conductive fluid liquid) is 1000 times more efficient at removing heat from data centres compared to traditional air-based methods of heat exchange.

About VisualCortex

VisualCortex is making video data actionable in the enterprise. As the world's best Video Intelligence Platform, VisualCortex provides the stability and scalability to productionize computer vision technology for the first time. Unlike camera-side or point solutions, VisualCortex can be used for any video analytics use case in any industry. VisualCortex's production-ready cloud-based environment transforms video assets into analyzable streams of data at scale.

The VisualCortex platform delivers the artificial intelligence smarts, governance and usability, enabling organisations to connect any number of video streams, repositories and use existing commodity hardware. An intuitive user interface, out-of-the-box reporting, range of configurations and integrations empower non-technical people to produce, analyse and act on insights derived from computer vision throughout the enterprise. Organisations can easily combine these AI-generated video insights with other data sources and systems to facilitate both real-time operations and strategic analysis. The VisualCortex Model Store also provides a secure marketplace for customers, partners and independent machine learning experts to share quality controlled computer vision models. For more information, visit www.visualcortex.com

For regular updates, follow VisualCortex on Twitter (@VisualCortexApp), LinkedIn (VisualCortex), YouTube (VisualCortex) and Facebook (@VisualCortexApp).

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About Supercloud

Powered by Firmus, Supercloud is a sovereign and sustainable Australian AI cloud, democratising access to high-performance cloud instances with more power, less carbon and less cost than other Australian clouds. Utilising Firmus' scaled immersion infrastructure, Supercloud's full-stack AI development platform and bare metal services feature powerful cloud instances – including the best of NVIDIA's AI accelerator chips, networking and frameworks – with up to six times less direct CO₂ emitted per hour than other Australian clouds, and at price points up to 50 per cent more competitive than the major cloud providers locally. For government, commercial, research and private use, Supercloud leverages breakthrough sustainable technology to do more with less.

About Firmus

Founded in 2017, Firmus has focused on developing the next generation of sustainable, cost-effective, secure and capable cloud compute technology. Firmus' modular immersion-cooled data centre platform is built to scale high-powered cloud and on-premise compute more sustainably, with up to 50 per cent reduction in energy required and CO₂ emitted, while being capable of powering the highest performance CPU and GPU loads required for AI, ML and HPC services. Through five years of research and development in Australia – including 20MW of test workloads - Firmus' Cube platform solves immersion cooling at scale, bringing the transformative benefits of this technology to markets around the world through an immersion platform that includes compute ready metal accessed as MaaS or through the Supercloud platform.

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