VisualCortex and Firmus Announce Alliance, Making Sustainable Computer Vision Accessible to Australian Organizations

Video intelligence platform provider, VisualCortex, is partnering with Firmus’ Supercloud to make enterprise-scale visual computing initiatives environmentally and economically sustainable for customers across Australia

SYDNEY and LAUNCESTON, Australia, August 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — VisualCortex, the video intelligence platform connecting the potential of computer vision to real business results, has partnered with Firmus, the builders of Supercloud – australia first sovereign computing cloud (in the country) good for the planet.

The partnership will enable large-scale video analysis environmentally sustainable and commercially feasible. Supercloud, powered by Firmus’ immersion-cooled data center in Tasmaniaenables VisualCortex and its customers to perform exhaustive machine learning workloads, while protecting its carbon footprint for the future.

The partnership produces three main results:

• A dedicated VisualCortex R&D; environment on Supercloud, allowing the vendor to further train computer vision modelsin less time, while producing less CO₂ emissions
• A referral agreement, allowing VisualCortex to offer Supercloud hosting services to current and future customers at discounted rates
• A second referral agreement allowing Firmus to recommend VisualCortex’s video intelligence platform to partners and customers at discounted rates.

CEO and co-founder of VisualCortex, Patrick Elliotsaid the VisualCortex – Firmus alliance would play an important role in realizing its vision for the video analytics market.

“At VisualCortex, our mission is to make video data actionable across the enterprise,” Elliott said. “Our Video Intelligence Platform makes the ubiquitous scaling of computer vision programs technologically and financially possible. At the same time, we fully recognize that computer vision requires significant GPU processing power. Supercloud, powered by Firmus, provides an ideal solution to address this challenge for VisualCortex and our customers.”

A recent article by Cornell University pointed out that training AI models in traditional data center environments can emit more than 626,000 pounds — or 284,000 kilograms — of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. For context, that’s almost five times that produced by an average American car over its lifetime. Supercloud’s immersion-cooled approach will allow VisualCortex to reduce the emissions produced by model training by approximately 50%.

“As our customers produce and share more video-based information, they too will want options to reduce cloud computing costs and environmental impact,” Elliott said. “Supercloud can help them achieve both of these outcomes, playing an important role in sustainably realizing our ambition to make video analytics accessible to more organizations and more decision makers within those organizations.”

CEO of Firmus and Supercloud, Tim Rosenfieldsaid the partnership was an easy decision to make, given the company’s complementary missions.

“VisualCortex is making video analytics mainstream,” Rosenfield said. “Because its video intelligence platform can facilitate any video analytics use casesacross any number of video cameras and streams, it’s easy to see how this will accelerate enterprise-scale computer vision deployments, dramatically increasing the demand for high-performance GPU cloud computing.

“As Australia’s low-carbon, secure and sustainable AI cloud computing, Supercloud is uniquely placed to support VisualCortex and its customers on this journey. Supercloud is built from the ground up to deliver powerful instances and tools of AI, ML and visual computing in greater volume, at lower cost and with less CO₂ issued per hour than anything else on the market today.

“Supercloud’s ‘Sustainable Computer Engine’ provides access to NVIDIA’s world-leading GPUs, including A100s for deep learning and A40s for visual computing; in addition to a flexible AI/ML stack and frameworks , allowing companies like VisualCortex to do more, with less.”

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

About VisualCortex

VisualCortex makes video data actionable in the enterprise. As the world’s best video intelligence platform, VisualCortex provides the stability and scalability needed to produce 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 environment transforms video assets into large-scale, analyzable data streams.

The VisualCortex platform provides artificial intelligence, governance, and usability, allowing organizations to connect any number of video streams, repositories, and use existing commodity hardware. Intuitive user interface, out-of-the-box reports, range of configurations and integrations enable non-technical people to produce, analyze and act on computer vision-derived insights across the enterprise . Organizations can easily combine this AI-generated video information 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 (Visual cortex), Youtube (Visual cortex) and Facebook (@VisualCortexApp).

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About SuperCloud

Powered by Firmus, Supercloud is a sovereign and sustainable Australian AI cloud, democratizing access to high-performance cloud instances with more power, less carbon and lower costs than other Australian clouds. Utilizing Firmus’ scale immersion infrastructure, Supercloud’s comprehensive AI development platform and bare metal services deliver powerful cloud instances, including the best of AI acceleration chips , networking and frameworks from NVIDIA, with up to six times less direct CO₂ issued per hour than other Australian clouds, and at prices up to 50% more competitive than leading local cloud providers. For government, commerce, research, and private use, Supercloud leverages groundbreaking sustainable technology to do more with less.

About Firmus

Founded in 2017, Firmus has been focused on developing the next generation of sustainable, cost-effective, secure and high-performance cloud computing technology. Firmus’ modular immersion-cooled data center platform is designed to scale high-powered cloud and on-premises computing more sustainably, with up to 50% reduction in required energy and CO₂ emitted, while being able to power the highest performance CPU and GPU loads required for AI, ML and HPC services. Thanks to 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 accessible as MaaS or through the Supercloud platform.

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