AMIRA YOUSSEF: Hello. I'm Amira Youssef.
I'm a Principal Program Manager in
Azure Edge Devices Platforms Team at Microsoft.
Today, I want to inspire you to begin
building Edge AI Solutions with Azure Percept.
Today's session, I will talk to you about how we embrace
digital transformation at the Edge with Azure Percept.
In my session today,
I will cover some Customer Stories and Scenarios.
I will provide an overview of AI at
the Edge and Azure Percept Portfolio
and I'll close with a few call to actions for you.
Let's get started. I want to share with
you some Customer Stories and Scenarios.
I want you to imagine for a second scene.
This is an oil and gas industry.
It's an offshore oil platform.
Ocean drilling is very hazardous environment.
It's complex machinery, high winds,
poor visibility, heavy moving objects.
It's really a complex environment for AI.
There's no Internet.
So really everything has to be at the Edge and local,
especially with low bandwidth connectivity
to the Cloud and really in this scenario,
we require a low latency loop.
The event occurring, observing,
alerting, and acting on it immediately.
On the next slide, I will show you.
This is a scenario with
a complex scene on an oil platform,
and you could see here
some real-time AI technology picking
up alerts and if you look at the middle of the box,
there's a blue crane and there's
an actual person there and immediately, there is
a person observed the alert and we can
act on it for our safety workers.
This is a scenario for
safety and the worker is under a heavy load and motion,
and through this technology we can activate this event,
and this is an example of the low latency loop.
Edge AI scenarios are for every kind of business.
Whether it's manufacturing, energy,
smart places, connected automotive,
retail, healthcare,
really the endless possibilities across industries.
Most of the customers that we
speak to have scenarios around either people or
vehicle detection across these industries.
Here at Microsoft, we're focusing on
two main industries; retail and manufacturing.
It doesn't mean we're not looking at other industries,
but we're really activating and
working actively on these two industries.
For example, if we look at
retail for shelf and analytics,
this is using advanced analytics
through automated stock analysis.
We can see like how fast you
need to restock your produce,
how fast are they going bad?
It's really real-time that you'll get business insights.
For manufacturing, for example,
where predictive maintenance and factory
safety protocols is important,
we can employee monitoring
a workplace environment like the scenario we've just
seen with sensors and with
Azure Percept, that is possible.
Now let's dig into AI at the Edge.
If we look at the industry, and according to IDC,
infrastructure spending over the next five years,
it's estimated that there will be 300 billion
will be spent on Cloud providers in the next five years.
We all know the Cloud is still growing.
But in comparison, it's estimated that there will be
1.5 trillion on the Edge that will be spent
and it's driven mainly by
data sovereignty, locality, and latency.
We're going to see what are the drivers
behind this growth on the Edge.
The first driver is modernize Edge infrastructure.
Companies choosing to modernize
their Edge IT infrastructure,
especially virtualized workloads.
This will lower the cost,
increase agility, running IT workloads at the Edge.
The second is 5G.
4G benefited consumers over the last five years.
Maintaining ad-hoc Wi-Fi network is complex and
replacing with 5G antennas will achieve high bandwidths.
It's make it more secure and scalable networks,
which equals a better signal.
The third pillar is AI at the Edge,
which is the focus of our talk today.
We believe AI at the Edge will drive
digital modernization and
transformations for many industries.
With the increased sophistication of sensors, AI models,
AI at the Edge will provide
your business real time insights,
and you will differentiate more.
Why Azure Percept? In the past,
AI at the Edge was complicated.
There were so many choices.
AI introduced lots of complexity and we really
have simplified the experience
for you with Azure Percept.
There are three main components for Azure Percept,
the hardware reference design and
development kit for rapid prototyping,
the full integrated experiences
from bottom to the top of the stack.
We'll scale through our partner ecosystem,
whether it's hardware or software.
We have really lowered the time to
develop Edge AI solutions.
We've lowered the complexity for you and
therefore, increase the opportunities for
you to differentiate and monetize.
Azure Percept is Edge Intelligence
from sensor to service,
Azure Percept is a fully integrated,
easy to use platform with
added security for creating Edge AI solutions.
We've designed Percept for you so you
can start prototyping in minutes with
hardware accelerators that integrate seamlessly with
Azure AI services such as
Cognitive Services and IoT services.
You can use whether brownfield or greenfield sensors
that you currently have.
Also, Azure Percept is a comprehensive Edge AI platform.
It's simple to build and manage it,
and it's designed with modern security and minds.
Azure Percept has these three pillars;
a Device Development platform,
an Edge AI Service Platform,
and a Certification Program.
These three complements and work together to create
an ecosystem through first party and
third party devices and applications.
Solution builders need devices
to build and run their apps.
Device builders are looking for
to pull through the demand created by these apps.
The certification program really
gives you the confidence that
all of this will work together.
Now, I will talk to you for each of
these pillars in more details and about our portfolio.
One of the upcoming products that we're going to have
and launch is Azure Percept on Azure Stack HCI.
This is a virtual machine plus HCI hardware.
It's ultimately a gateway virtual appliance.
We believe this is a better together story,
improving the end to end story with Edge AI and HCI.
Thus, you can deploy the workloads in minutes on
existing HCI devices is going to be
integrated and powered by NVIDIA GPUs and
coming soon on the Azure certified program,
you will see there will be
a click to check the box Edge AI and
you'll know that this is compatible with
a GPU and Percept for you to really get started.
The other product I wanted to talk to you
about is Azure Edge AI Installer.
We often hear from
our solution builders that they want to get
started before physical devices
are procured and deployed.
To kick start Cloud ready Azure Edge Solutions,
we've deepened our integration with
NVIDIA Jetson DK and we've
created the Azure Edge AI Installer.
This will streamline your device setup
for just in DK case
by automating Azure components and installation,
and this is available for you today for early access.
We're also partnering with NVIDIA and
the Device Builder community to ensure the availability
of production grade devices and
through Azure Edge AI device developer kits.
This will enable our device builders to
create secure compatible devices that
accelerate Azure Edge AI solutions
from the proof of concept all through to production.
I provided you a quick overview about
the device portfolio and
device platform that is available with Azure Percept.
Now, I want to switch a little bit gears
with the Azure Percept Studio.
What is Azure Percept Studio?
It's the out-of-the-box experience
where it's pre-trained to recognize common objects.
You can plug it in,
see the web stream immediately and see
the AI output in 10 minutes.
You can access it through
the Azure portal and you really only
need 15-20 images for the no code using custom vision,
which you can then harness
and build your AI models yourself.
But with that, I want to show you a demo of
the Azure Percept's new studio experience
for you to get started.
Let's look at the recording.
[MUSIC]
SPEAKER 2: Whether you're new to AI
models and prefer
walk-through guidance
or an advanced developer
looking to quickly deploy,
Azure Percept Studio enables you to easily get
started prototyping your Edge AI business solution.
For this tutorial, we will
demonstrate how quickly you can create
a pilot solution and deploy it to Azure Stack HCI.
We are here in the Azure Percept Studio and have already
on board in Azure Percept VM using Windows Admin Center.
Next, we will create a solution.
We start by creating a solution,
by providing a name and description.
We then connect it to an Azure Stack HCI device
where it is deployed to an Azure Percept VM.
You'll notice that both Azure video analyzer
and Azure spatial analysis are fully integrated.
We can easily configure resources to orchestrate
the pipeline of devices, cameras, and models.
Next, click "Create",
and now we can easily add a camera.
Simply click "Add cameras" and enter
the camera's RTSP URL along with your credentials.
Tapping "Add" will show
the camera details and a static thumbnail view.
We can add multiple cameras to
a solution by following the same steps.
Now that we have two cameras added.
Click on the camera thumbnail to see
the live stream and click "Apply AI"
skill to see a pre-populated library
of Azure spatial analysis skills.
There are three skills available;
people counting in an area for scenarios
such as queue management or end cap displays,
people count that cross a line to measure things such as
store occupancy or people
detection when entering or exiting an area.
For this tutorial, we are going to
select people counting in an area.
Now let's configure the AI skill by drawing
a polygon in the area around the checkout line.
Once it is drawn, tap "Deploy" and the solution is
deployed to the Azure Stack HCI device
that we selected before.
Just like that, we have
inferencing results on our camera stream.
Now let's click on the "Insight Tab", where
we can see some basic insights and alerts built in.
For instance, we can configure an alert as
an SMS to be sent to
the store operator when the queue is too long.
The results can also be streamed to Power BI to
visualize the data in real time from across the store.
We are excited to see what you will
do with the power of Azure Percept.
To learn more, visit our documentation and
community page in the Azure Percept Studio Portal.
AMIRA YOUSSEF: Now we have seen
Azure Percept Studio demo.
This is the new experience that we're launching.
As you can see, you can deploy your solution just
in a few minutes and you can start prototyping.
The other part that I wanted to talk to you about
is Azure Percept PaaS Services.
Azure Percept Edge AI PaaS Services
streamlines the creation and
operation of Edge AI applications, the
solution, device, and security management capabilities.
Azure Percept services will
allow developers to easily deploy and
operate Edge AI solutions across various device types.
Our Edge AI PaaS consists of both Cloud and Edge APIs.
We support bring your own models
so you can train and build your own.
I've shared with you devices platform,
our services platform, and the third pillar that I'm
going to talk to you about is the certified ecosystem.
With the Azure Certified Program,
this will give you in
confidence and product compatibility.
It will differentiate for you
and increase discoverability, and
really simplify the development
for you, and at the end of the day,
it will give you confidence that everything just works.
Where we started the presentation sharing about
scenarios and where is
Edge AI applicable to the industries,
you really can check some of the real world scenarios on
our tech community that
brings the technology of Azure Percept to light.
With Azure Percept, we can
address various business problems.
For example, the ability to detect
freshness of produce in supermarkets,
allowing us to waste less food at the same time optimize
ordering and stocking frequency
that affect the bottom line.
There are many other examples whether, as you
could see on the screen from traffic monitoring in
smart cities to building an aircraft to workers safety.
You can check it on our tech community block page,
where customers and partners have shared
their experiences with Azure Percept.
Traditionally, AI and the Edge solutions are complex,
with Azure Percept we simplified the experience
making it accessible to anyone with passion to built.
We invite you to join us and get started building
your own projects and discover
the possibilities with Azure Percept.
I close my talk today with a few call to actions to you.
If you're interested in the Edge AI Installer,
please register for early access on aka.ms/EdgeAI_EA.
If you want to learn more about Azure Percept,
check out aka.ms/percept and
if you're interested to learn more about
our customer and partner stories,
check aka.ms/azureperceptblog.
Finally, if you want to check
about the Azure certified program,
check it out at aka.ms/CertLearnMore.
Finally, I'd love to hear from you,
my contact is on the screen
and thank you for listening today's session.