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CGI, the Canadian IT consultancy, has launched a new offering called CGI Machine Vision that corporate clients can use to crunch data generated at remote locations.

Quebec-headquarters CGI is mainly known for providing IT outsourcing services and related services. However, the firm also offers ready-to-use software products. One likely reason for its move into the application market is that enterprise software has much higher profit margins than consulting services, which makes the segment a worthwhile focus for a revenue growth initiative.

CGI Machine Learning is designed for companies like electric utilities that have a lot of physical assets at remote, often difficult-to-reach locations. Detecting when those systems need repairs and figuring out what’s causing the issue can be an immensely complicated process.

Enter CGI’s new CGI Machine Vision offering. It allows companies to set up sensors near a remote asset like a utility pole, collect the data picked up by those sensors and automatically analyze it for malfunction indicators.

Notably, CGI offers complementary hardware alongside CGI Machine Vision’s software components.

Customers receive a GPU that they can install near the sensors they use to monitor a remote hardware asset. The GPU reviews the information picked up by the sensors and discards the data points that don’t contain any valuable insights. This means only the remaining, high-value data needs to be analyzed for malfunction indicators, which saves computing resources.

“There are some things that simple telemetry and IoT sensors cannot detect, and many scenarios where physical, human inspection of assets is impractical, or where monitoring by video or camera produces data that cannot be usefully interpreted,” explained Neville Richards, the director of operational technology consulting services at CGI’s Australian branch. “CGI Machine Vision’s edge-AI technology can look for a range of issues and alert when problems are detected.”

CGI tested the offering with several customers in the U.K. before publicly announcing it. According to the firm, CGI Machine Vision helped multiple water treatment facility operators streamline the manner in which they monitor remote hardware assets. 

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