South Australian startup OpsGuard helps businesses operate efficiently and reach more customers through innovative technology and a full IT service offering.

The business provides a wide range of IT services to clients including cloud managed services, custom app development, cybersecurity and advanced custom Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning applications.

Recently, OpsGuard was selected to participate in the Government of South Australia’s Go2Gov program, inviting them to apply their AI solutions to streamline public sector data matching and cleansing processes.

“We are developing an innovative AI solution called DAVE (Data Augmentation and Visualisation Engine) to solve a massive problem almost all Government agencies and private enterprises face when utilising distributed systems and data,” said CEO and Founder Kerry Esson.

“In most cases, these systems were never designed to share data or communicate with one another, yet they all use subsets of the same information.

“DAVE takes the data from all of these systems, aggregates it, cleanses it, augments it and then visualises the combined data in a meaningful way.

“Government agencies and enterprises now have an automated data augmentation and aggregation engine that provides unparalleled business intelligence.”

Mr Esson is incredibly excited about the future of his industry, saying that AI is a powerful tool that allows any business to automate processes, gain unprecedented intelligence and reach and interact with our customers in new ways.

“Already AI is replacing mundane analytical tasks and automating machine interactions with humans—leading to more personalised and connected digital interactions,” he said.

“AI is still in its infancy, and the next 20 years will be amongst the most exciting.”

Based in regional South Australia, OpsGuard has also embraced the widespread adoption of remote working models, introduced by many others as a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Running a fully-remote business has different challenges than one that is either hybrid or office-bound, but it has not had a major impact on our ability to grow the business,” Mr Esson said.

“In recent times, building rapport and meeting with clients virtually has become the new norm and clients are more willing to engage via platforms such as Zoom, making remote work even easier.

This story originally appeared as a case study in the 2021 SA Startup Report.