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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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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Big Data Analytics and Hadoop

What is the secret of success for Telecom operators in M2M? Selling few kb of data per device? Building deeper connections with enterprise customers? Learning how to sell a “solution”? I think all of these plus the ability to store & analyze data collected from the devices.

About 80% – 90% of the world’s data is unstructured, and most businesses don’t even attempt to use this data to their advantage. Imagine if you could afford to keep all the data generated by your business? Even more important, keep & analyze the most important data for you. For example, storing and analyzing terabytes of data over time might not add nearly as much value as analyzing 1 gigabyte of really important, impactful information in real time. Imagine if you had a way to analyze this data.

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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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How to train your sales team efficiently

I have been training lots of sales teams on products that are newly launched or already on the market. I have met with real good sales people as well as regular ones. The only thing that was all same for any sales rep was the good results coming from the methodologies that I have applied at the beginning of the session. I will not go into the ways and methodologies I am using in this post but just wanted to share a lessons learned with you.

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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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LTE First Impressions

I would like to share few things around LTE development in Sweden. First of all 4G has been adopted much faster than 3G. Remember that for the first years after introducing 3G, in most markets, there was hardly any data usage. Contrary to that, just like two years after the launch of LTE in Sweden, we are at the data usage level we were at with 3G at 10 years post-launch. I can clearly say we have already skipped the pre-maturity phase entirely.

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So you want to be a Cloud provider?

What do you need to be a Cloud provider? You could be a Telco or an IT Reseller. Once you decided that you will provide Cloud services you need these capabilities.

1. A Cloud enabled data center

2. Platforms (app store, SSO, aggregation platform and so on…) to provide cloud

3. Monetize your services

4. Business development capabilities.

I think yet another important questions that you need to answer are;

1. What do we have internally today? (Because a lot of the things listed above can be outsourced as well)

2. Your ability to handle an ecosystem.

3. Your sales channels and capabilities

4. What will make you different? (Easy to do business with, price, quality, or what else…)

5. Applications and Infrastructure is commodity now, so you need to focus on business models and content instead.

Sit and think twice before you make any move towards Cloud. Make a good business case and take meaningful risks. Because the market is still emerging and Cloud is still “nice to have” not “must to have” at the moment.

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Today’s Networks and Next Generation Networks

Yesterday at Kista sience tower, where is the sillicon valley of Sweden, we had a meeting with a vendor to discuss next generation switching, cloud, M2M and IMS. I think today’s network is quite lagacy and complex. IMS is coming but nothing big will happen in couple of years. Yet another interesting topic was  the interoperability of new network systems with the old, legacy ones up and running at the core today. Cloud and M2M are thightly related to each other and it is really up to a telco to position itself from connection only to solution provider in this journey. Do you have any experience on telco cloud services or IMS, what are your thinking around these topics?

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Telecom Cloud Services Summit – Berlin

This year I am attending the Telecom Cloud Services Summit at Berlin by the end of April. I am working with telecom cloud business nowadays at Tele2 Sweden and this event will be quite an interesting one to meet with telecom experts from all around the world. I personally want to see these topics covered in the summit; Where to start a telco cloud, IaaS or SaaS or UCaaS, What is the business case, In house or partnership model.

I still think some points are not clear in telco cloud. Business case is very tricky and it also restricts you in type of service you provide if you are fix only or mobile only provider. Yet another interesting topic is that, how to provide telco grade IT to SMEs and how to sell it? Are SMEs ready to pay for Telco grade IT or expect to get it for free? I think all of these questions will be answered in the event and then I will write another blog post to review the summit. You can check the aganda of the event from here.

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