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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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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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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Ericsson launches Telco Data Center Build and Cloud

I was reading my emails after a long summer vacation at my office on Tuesday and just realized a pfd attachment; Ericsson goes into data center business to be a stronger ICT player. I think this is a smart move since a lot of Telecom companies are nowadays looking into providing some IT services as well. Being a close partner to Telco players, Ericsson needed to evolve as well and they did it. Ericsson’s Data Center Build and Data Center optimization offering will meet increased demand for cloud-based services as enterprises seek to become increasingly mobile. With this offering, Ericsson enters the market for data centers and strengthens its position as an ICT player.

I liked this news and found it a very important and strategic move. I think the future is bright for evolving and developing companies such as Ericsson.

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Cloud, M2M and Big Data for Telcos

One petabyte a day: That’s how much data BMW’s Connected Drive cars will generate by 2017 reckons BMW Group IT infrastructure chief Mario Müller.

I took out this note while listening BMW group’s Cloud presentation at Telecom Cloud Services Summit at Berlin this year. M2M data will need a lot of IT capacity and the data produced by machines will be a real source of revenue. I realized that a lot of Telcos are still confused when it comes to M2M and Cloud business models. Many invested heavily into the infrastructure and getting ready for a big fight against global giants such as Amazon. Well, sure they can differentiate based on their local market demans but I am a bit sceptical to IaaS, except storage, at all.

I realized that when Telcos talk about M2M it was all about providing connectivity and mainly about infrastructure when it comes to the Cloud. None of the CSPs really talked about Big Data yet. I believe enterprises need more than basic connectivity and infrastructure. I think they need a solution, which will help them create business intelligence and value for them. I think big data analytics and ICT business solutions are the future for CSPs.

Around sixty percent of CSPs fear they’ll be bit-pipe providers in the M2M and Cloud market. To avoid this, they must have the ambition to take some more risk and be more innovative. I do not agree at all – as one Telco professional stated on the panel- “telcos are expected to be evolutionary not revolutionary”. Telcos need to better understand the business value of their offers and be more a complete ICT providers, extracting intelligence from the pipe – instead of simply delivering connection from A to B.

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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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