Open Source Complexity vs. alwaysAI Simplicity

A monumental wave of change in the business world is underway thanks to computer vision (CV). Giving intelligent sight to computers and machines, computer vision leverages camera systems to create AI-powered video analytics to help businesses automate and improve operations.  

While computer vision is more accessible than ever, the computer vision development landscape is still difficult for businesses to navigate. Enterprise teams face multiple challenges and obstacles because computer vision is too complex to implement from scratch. That’s why many developers look to open-source tools. However, most computer vision development and deployment solutions still require a large team and specialized knowledge to execute properly. There is another way. 

Enterprises ultimately care about ROI. Is that possible with open source? Not likely, or at least you won’t see the same return as you would with a  computer vision platform like alwaysAI. With our easy-to-use platform, we bring cutting-edge computer vision technology to the market faster than you could with using open source. The alwaysAI platform provides the power and flexibility needed to facilitate the transformation companies are searching for through the use of real-time operational data. This article will explain the benefits and drawbacks of open source compared to our end-to-end computer vision platform.

Ways to Develop Computer Vision Solutions

When it comes to implementing computer vision solutions for any business, there are several options with different requirements for development time, cost, and expertise. These options include:

• Custom development: Acquiring an in-house team to develop model architecture from scratch, do model training, and develop and deploy is time-consuming. It’s also wildly expensive due to the high cost of developers with specific computer vision, machine learning, and AI expertise. An advantage is that you will own all of the intellectual property and not pay for licenses. But this option will likely have the lowest ROI. 
• Low-code/no-code proprietary tools: These tools often cover very limited computer vision techniques. You may be able to develop a small feature or component quickly, but customization to fit your particular use case is often limited. Locking yourself into these solutions may make you disappointed in the long run. The good news is you don't need developers for this, but you’ll get only a slice of the solution, not a fully realized system. 
• Open source: It provides the base code, but you still have a long way to go in building an actual application. You’ll need computer vision experts and skillful developers to build and maintain the solution consistently.
• Computer vision platforms: alwaysAI exists to help enterprises eliminate complexity and allow a wide range of developers to build flexible computer vision applications more easily. Our platform will lower your total costs and enable you to quickly see the value of computer vision for your business.

What Is Open-Source Technology?

Open-source technology is software with source code that is free for anyone to use, modify and enhance. You can use the code to build new applications, integrate them into your projects, create unique products and distribute them commercially. Open-source technology is often used collaboratively to create new projects and enhance the underlying technology. It provides a lot of freedom and opportunity for innovation, but with that freedom comes potential challenges in using it to build enterprise computer vision solutions. 

Ultimately, open source is just a starting point. It provides a primitive foundation but takes a lot of effort to create a useful application for a unique business use case. Limited budgets may drive the decision to use open source, but costs can often exceed budgets due to the additional work required to adjust the open-source code. Computer vision deployment also introduces challenges as open source doesn’t have a simple solution for easy edge deployment. There are various types of devices, and operating systems that developers have to contend with on the edge, and building from an open-source tool means the application has to be coded again for each edge device or operating system.

Why waste your time and resources using all these open-source tools to build a computer vision model? When you can build, train, and deploy seamlessly with alwaysAI. The only computer vision solution you need.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Source

When considering open-source technology, you must evaluate its capabilities and drawbacks.

Advantages of Open Source

• Leverage pre-built tools: You can leverage components that at least get you part of the way to building a computer vision solution. You don’t have to start from scratch with building model architectures and training models. Thus, you can save time, effort, and money.
• It’s free: What's most attractive about open source is that there is no cost to use the code. But in reality, it’s not completely free since you will need to hire a developer to customize code for your unique needs.
• It’s unbounded: The possibilities for implementing computer vision are nearly limitless. Open source can be great for those just starting to explore without a clear end goal in mind. If you believe building computer vision in-house has a competitive advantage and you have the time to test different model architectures and features, open source could be an option.

Disadvantages of Open Source

• Open Source is complex: It will provide you with the basic computer vision recipe, but getting a finished product requires highly skilled programmers and other resources to make it work in the real world. There are often multiple programming languages to learn and continuous development requirements.  Additionally, reusing code on the internet might cause issues (bugs, unstable code).
• Cost: Although considered an advantage by some, the total cost of ownership of a viable computer vision solution will be much higher. Having the open-source code resolves only one step in the process. The code is free, but maintaining and building the whole platform is not. At least 50% of a computer vision solution goes to building the software framework and core functionality. Then, you still have to develop a unique computer vision application tailored to your use case and business requirements.
• Doesn’t solve the end-to-end development and deployment problem: You will have to hire developers to build a complete solution. Once they develop the code, they will have to maintain it continuously, and costs will start to climb. In model training, you’ll need to hire one or more machine learning engineers, costing you around $150,000 to $250,000 per year. 

alwaysAI - A Better Approach to Computer Vision

alwaysAI provides a complete, flexible, and cost-effective platform for developing, running, and managing computer vision applications. Instead of building a platform yourself, we eliminate the complexity of computer vision and allow you to focus on your application. 

The underlying components of computer vision (e.g., object detection) are not all that unique; that’s not the component that creates a competitive advantage. How you build the application and apply it to the use case is unique. If you go with open source, you will have to build basic components and also maintain them. It defocuses you, doesn’t bring any competitive value, and adds a lot of additional costs. 

A computer vision platform provides all the necessary components (i.e., model frameworks, visual processing, starter applications, APIs) and handles the often tedious administrative tasks (i.e., security, continuous integration, continuous deployment) of running computer vision. The alwaysAI platform is built by senior computer vision engineers who provide continuous maintenance, so you don’t have to hire an in-house machine learning engineer – saving you money as well as allowing you to focus on your application (where the value is) and not on building and maintaining a platform.

Benefits of the alwaysAI Computer Vision Platform

Compared to open-source tools, alwaysAI is a turn-key platform-as-a-service that delivers a true end-to-end computer vision solution. alwaysAI is changing how businesses develop and deploy computer vision applications. By hiding the complexity through one easy-to-access API layer, alwaysAI stays on top of the latest computer vision advances, so you don’t have to. That means you can leverage your existing staff without adding computer vision experts. Ultimately, our platform reduces your total cost of ownership and sets you on the path of using computer vision much faster.

Pre-Trained Model Libraries and Model Training

In open source, you have to design model architecture and hire a machine learning engineer to perform model training and deployment. The alwaysAI platform has the model architecture fully developed as a no-code solution. We offer hundreds of pre-trained computer vision models that can be quickly applied to your application.

We’ve also simplified model training. To quickly train your chosen model for your use case, simply add your image data to our cloud-based training server and annotate the images. Your model will then be trained and optimized for your unique conditions in hours or days instead of weeks or months.

alwaysAI.co platform

Starter Applications

The alwaysAI platform provides a simplified application development environment. In computer science, there are three standardized languages: Java/JavaScript, C/C++, and Python. Most enterprise applications have been written in Java, but JavaScript today is considered the de facto standard of web services. C and C++ are commonly used in open-source tools and tend to be much more complicated languages. Lastly, Python is usually the first language that coders learn, as its syntax is easier to learn than other languages. For greater accessibility, alwaysAI is based on Python, like many projects in the data science arena.

Therefore, any developer with Python knowledge can start building computer vision applications with alwaysAI quickly. We offer hundreds of starter applications that allow you to select a model and launch an application like object detection or pose estimation in minutes. Prototyping and deployment are made easier through our edgeIQ library of Python APIs, which help automate and speed up the development workflow. 

Easily Develop for Unique Use Cases

At its essence, computer vision is about creating video analytics applications. Computer vision solutions perform best when tailored to the specific application environment due to the unique camera, lighting conditions, and other environmental factors. Also, you often need to understand how people or objects are moving through the zones to capture the necessary data accurately.

To create the most accurate real-time video analytics application where the system makes decisions about actions happening in the environment, you will need new unique configurations and algorithms for each place you're deploying. This is where alwaysAI excels. In the case of a common application with unique conditions (lighting, moving objects, etc.), which are part of the configuration, alwaysAI makes it easier to train and create a new algorithm for each location.

Simplified Deployment on Edge Devices

Deployment is one of the biggest challenges in computer vision. How you package your application and deploy it to one or many edge devices is a critical step and often stumps many computer vision implementation teams.

One of the biggest hurdles a computer vision solution has to overcome is performing actual deployment of both the application and models. Building with open-source tools, you would have to construct that architecture, then develop a solution to tie it into your DevOps platform. alwaysAI solves this problem by containerizing the model and application for easy deployment. Our platform allows you to reap the benefits that come with easy edge deployment, including; lower inference costs, better real-time data, greater security, and data privacy.

Powerful Analytics Capabilities

Ultimately, computer vision applications produce a lot of data, so you’ll have to figure out how to access, analyze, and store it if required. A lot of effort goes into building a complete analytics environment from scratch. alwaysAI provides analytics dashboards and tools out of the box to better contextualize your data. The ability to act on your data in real-time is the key to a truly impactful computer vision solution. The alwaysAI platform allows you to seamlessly analyze your raw data, adjust your models and applications, and redeploy to continuously optimize and maintain your computer vision solution.

Learn How alwaysAI Can Bring Real-Time Data to Your Business

Our team of experts at alwaysAI has extensive experience in computer vision and understands how to develop solutions that drive meaningful business results. Computer vision development is complex and many companies waste precious time trying to use open-source tools or create a solution from scratch and they end up failing. Our easy and affordable computer vision platform allows any company to quickly build and deploy custom computer vision applications that drive huge ROI.