How not to fail on IoT

IoT is a real phenomenon which continues to transform enterprises, cities, farms, industries and many more. Typical IoT environment is a complex set-up as various components need to come together to make sure technology works, so you can collect the data you need. I have been a sales person in IoT industry for more than 5 years. I have been working globally with many different countries, companies, cultures and backgrounds. I have seen companies transforming themselves, by the help of IoT and also many failed projects. Today I will try to sum-up which are the main drivers behind a successful IoT venture.

In essence, there are 2 types of IoT projects; Strategic or Tactical IoT. Strategic IoT projects are typically driven by the top management, linked to other parts of the organization and have a bit more clear business case behind. Where else Tactical IoT projects are usually driven by business units, executed mostly by internal resources and not linked to the overall business goals.

Both Strategic and Tactical IoT projects may or may not succeed depending on the ambition levels. However, I challenge my customers to think about their core business and how IoT can enable improvements on it. At the end of the day IoT is not what you are good at. Why not outsource the tech and focus on business value and data monetization. At the end of the day, you will collect a lot of sensor data and you need to have a plan how to monetize it. If IoT does not improve your core business, it will eventually fail because the underlying tech-ecosystem is rather complex and IoT requires continues vendor/technology/strategy improvement.

Now from pure technology perspective, the successful projects all had some common footprint behind; all IT systems (ERP, CRM, Billing, etc) are involved, over the air access, security and high availability are required. Dont be afraid to spend a bit more Capex to save a lot of Opex later on. You must build your IoT topology based on flexibility and adaptability as new standards, tech components and regulations will fade in.

Keep the long story short, IoT is a fast changing, rather complicated ecosystem. Therefore you need external know-how and consulting partner who will help you build budget, data monetization and manage operational aspects. Your vendors must provide world-class support, integration and implementation help. Do your homework and get ready for vendor and technology immaturity. Assess vendor and tech continuously. Last but not least, contact Tele2 IoT so we can bring world-wide best practices and know-how.

Alper CELIK

Global Sales Manager

TELE2 IoT

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7 lessons learned from real life IoT projects

I am a simple sales guy, working with many different companies across the world, helping them getting their devices connected. I have customers in many different industries such as; telematics, smart metering, asset tracking/monitoring, security, health care, automotive and so on. Working with such a mix, gives me an opportunity to analyze what companies do with their IoT initiatives in different industries. In this blog post, I will share what I see is happening in real life based on my own personal experience.

First of all, many companies are talking about IoT and dreaming to getting their business model changed from selling product to selling solutions/services. Because they want to differentiate their products, get closer to their end customers, better understand how/when/where/why their products are being used etc. I think there is a lot of focus on the technology side of IoT and a lot of companies are lost when it comes to what type of sensory data to be collected and how this data will be converted into increased revenue & reduced costs.

I will divide my experience into 2 separate chapters as Technology and Commercial parts. In my opinion IoT should be very much tied into a commercial goal and just to connect things will not be enough at the end to truly innovate. What I see in real life is that most of the companies start with solving a simple problem, which is nice – as they start small, but missing the big picture of the potential savings/improvements that could be achieved with that specific IoT solution.

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5 Signs for a bad M2M connectivity agreement

M2M and IoT solutions are in many ways all the same; a unique problem and a unique solution. “Where is my truck at the moment? Is my office protected well tonight? How is the patient doing?” All these questions are unique for a customer but there are some common rules that every M2M/IoT solution can benefit from. The solution collects some kind of data, communicates it back to a data centre, the company performs some kind of analysis and compares the results against expected or past performance levels.

Connectivity, in this business flow, is one of the crucial components. While every M2M/IoT solution is specific, there are common needs for a trusted connectivity provider who will cope with your business requirements. But how do you recognize them? I will try to give you 5 big mistakes that will increase your M2M connectivity costs.

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Machine to Machine

I should say for a Telecom operator to be successful on M2M requires some serious efforts. A dedicated M2M team (technical, support, operations, agreements, sales in the ground and a strong management etc), different KPIs and goals for the M2M unit, much more flexibility and support from the top management.

Europe is not doing fine economically and people are spending less and less on Telecom services. For Telcos to keep growing, they should invest in new areas like M2M, Cloud and Media & Entertainment Services. However, the success will not come quick and margins are not as good as we got in typical Telecom services. I see that more and more Telcos in Europe are taking serious steps in M2M and leaving the Cloud to IT providers; making M2M a bet of Telcos and Cloud for IT playes.

Teleco industry needs a new push and new units might bring that extra jump for growth. M2M is an opportunity for Telcos and for sure requires a different approach and skills. My recommendation is, select your fight and go for it. But do not expect quick wins.

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Internet of Things (IoT) Vs. M2M

I am part of the M2M global solutions team at a multinational Telecom company and one of our main goal is to follow the trends and make sure that the whole company is moving to the right directions. Being a Telecom company the first thing we want to win is of course the connectivity and also the device platform services.

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Profitable 4G (LTE) for Telcos

4G (LTE) is just super cool!

I have been using LTE for quite some while and I just love it. It is much faster than even fix line and I do not want to connect to any wi-fi just because my 4G is the best. Yes, this is how i feel about it as an end-user. I love it and I am willing to pay an amount that will not cost me an arm and a leg. But, what is that amount which Telecom operators should ask for?

As a group product manager in a multi-national Swedish telecom operator, this is what a lot of people around me are thinking about. I have made some observations and these are my conclusions for a profitable 4G (LTE) business for Telcos.

4G (LTE) Succcess Factors:
1- wide and functioning coverage
2- wide selection of 4G (LTE) handsets

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Open APIs for Enabling Cloud & M2M Services

Communications service providers (CSPs) are traditionally conservative, more focused on internal product innovation, targets mass-market services rather than niche-oriented. But  CSPs now have a strategic business challenge; they are not growing fast enough. Subscriber numbers are still growing at a high rate in the emerging markets, but this rate is much smaller in developed markets. Here in the Nordics, we see huge competition with brutal price wars and hopeless fight for growing market shares. Meanwhile, competition worldwide has increased tremendously and ARPU (avrg revenue per user) is not keeping pace with the additional network costs associated with modern time, high-bandwidth services like mobile TV, HD video and the likes.

Graph 1- Operators with a commercial web services offering, worldwide

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Telecom Trends 2013

Trends and buzzwords are everywhere. On the other hand the core business of Telcos is shrinking. In such an environment, it is hard to find new revenue sources and keep the revenue figures green. In my world a telco should drive the core business with 100% focus on sales, cost consciousness and internal efficiency however look for alternative revenue sources for the future. In the presentation below, I try to tease you a bit on what might be those alternative revenue sources for Telcos. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me. I hope you enjoy it!

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What Does Convergence Mean?

I was thinking about the meaning of convergence in Telecom context this morning. I have came up to see this nice graph developed by VisionMobile. So what do you think are the vision, focal point and the compete based on will look like by 2015?

My guess is vision: connected devices, focal point: software/apps and compete based on: quality of content.

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Is Mobile Device Management an Opportunity for Telcos?

If you ask CTOs what are they looking to do to secure personal devices used at work, they generally talk about data encryption or MDM. Since data encryption is already widely used I think the real interesting thing is to understand what they are looking for in an MDM solution?

I think there the confusion starts. Should we then consider a mobile device managent, or mobile security solution or maybe a mobile application/data management tool?

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