Intel Jettisons Cognovision Staff
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
One of the juiciest talking points at #Infocomm13 was that Intel has laid off the majority of its Cognovision staff and is set to close down its Toronto office.
It’s not clear whether the whole Cognovision team was offered relocation to the Intel campus in Chandler, AZ (where the Retail Solution Division is based) or whether they were effectively ordered out and given the usual Intel mandate in such ‘redundancies’ which is find-a-job-in-Intel-in-30-days or foxtrot oscar.
What is clear is that only one member of the original Cognovosion team is moving and staying with the product.
This all ties in with previous news that Intel will be announcing its own CMS (based on the Ryarc software it acquired / licensed earlier) which we are expecting to be announced this Thursday in the Jose Avalos webinar (more detail on that Wednesday).
The announcement Thursday will say that AIM Suite will live on but will be integrated with the Ryarc CMS BUT it sounds to us like the core video analytics expertise is all but leaving. As an Intel Insider told us that Arizona blame the Cognovision technology itself for failure to compete with market leader Quividi (even at USD 10 a pop, it seems, Intel cannot sell AIM Suite) this all makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is Jose’s desire to compete in the digital signage software world.
Cognovision was of course acquired back in November 2010, creating the monster-that-still-won’t-sell Intel AIM Suite.
June 18th, 2013 at 13:15 @594
I don’t know about you, but I am ordering 24 hot wings to snack on so I can be at one with the speaker whilst I listen to the product launch…errr… highly informative webinar.