Technology Reseller v41

BUSINESS BRIEFING technologyreseller.co.uk 33 With Emma Mahy, Chief Executive of IoT Solutions Group Q&A Technology Reseller (TR): What inspired you and Neal Forse to set up IoT Solutions Group in 2018? Emma Mahy (EM): Before setting up the business, Neal Forse and I worked for a Low Powered Wide Area Network (LPWAN) operator that was building out the Sigfox network here in the UK. I had 2,000 gateways to find homes for all over the country and a small budget to pay for roof rental on the highest buildings I could find. My first port of call was councils and housing associations, and in meeting after meeting I heard the same thing: ‘I totally get the need for IoT, I understand the value, but where do I go to get the sensing devices, where do I go to get the connectivity, where do I go to get the software analytics and the dashboarding?’ The feedback was the same everywhere: ‘We don’t want to keep going to multiple vendors to fulfil our needs’. We knew, as well, that the suppliers we were working with quite often sat within just one section of the value proposition, so there was clearly a gap in the market for an end-to-end IoT solution provider. Some of the big players professed that they could deliver that but at a cost of millions of pounds, which was not what councils wanted. We went to a Sigfox conference in Miami and decided that there was a real opportunity here and that we just had to go for it. Two weeks after returning from the States, I resigned, and the business was born. TR: In your blog you say the fragmented nature of IoT solutions at the time was causing an ‘adoption crisis’. What were some of the major obstacles for end users and do they still exist? EM: The biggest problem is retrieving the data from the IoT device. To send the information, the device has to connect to a Low Powered Wide Area Network. There are three main ones for IoT – narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), provided by Vodafone; Sigfox; and LoRaWAN – none of which have complete coverage across the UK. Vodafone is working hard at completing this network coverage, but it is taking time and many system upgrades to make it happen. That was hindrance number one. Secondly, because IoT has been a buzzword and people are always nervous about taking that first step into a new world of technology, there have been multiple proofs of concept and pilot schemes. In a lot of these, IoT companies have provided equipment and solutions at too high a price. The remit with IoT is to deploy devices in their thousands, not in their tens, so you have to ensure that what you are delivering is at a price point that makes the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the business case stack up. When councils introduce technology in place of an existing service or person, they have to demonstrate value. As a result of these obstacles, there have been very few early adopters. However, the value of these solutions is now being recognised, and deployments at scale are starting to happen. What we are finding, particularly in the adult social care market, is that there is now a cascade effect: when you have deployments of devices in the field, you have data you can show to people and outcomes you can demonstrate, giving people the confidence to adopt. TR: What are the main constituent parts of an end-to-end solution? EM: For an end-to-end solution to work, you need a sensing device to fulfil its brief, whether it’s monitoring how full a bin is or the temperature in a room or whether a parking space is in use. That information is then relayed via one of the LPWAN networks. We mainly use NB-IoT because there is no onus on the customer to provide wifi or mobile connectivity. This brings the cost down and means the customer doesn’t have to manage a communications network, which is quite an asset. One of our strengths is that we are network-agnostic. Many companies only produce devices that run on the Sigfox network, whereas all our devices can function on any of the three LPWAN networks. So, if a customer has a device in Birmingham, say, and doesn’t have NB-IoT coverage but does have Sigfox, the device will talk through Sigfox. IoT Solutions Group was founded three and a half years ago by Chief Executive Emma Mahy and CTO Neal Forse. As two network professionals excited by the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) they set out to deliver essential services more efficiently and cost- effectively for the benefit of individuals, service providers and the wider community. From the outset, one of IoT Solutions Group’s guiding principles has been Tech For Good – a belief that technology, like the company’s new in-home sensor for independent living (see box), can make a positive difference to people’s lives. Solutions that save time and money as well have obvious appeal for service providers in local government, healthcare, facilities management, waste management and other sectors. Today, IoT Solutions Group solves remote monitoring challenges for more than 40 organisations both directly and in partnership with System Integrators (SIs) like Agilisys and CGI. With recent seed investment, the addition of a new Sales Director and Marketing Executive to its nine-strong team and the development of its first B2C solution, IoT Solutions Group is beginning an exciting new phase in its development. James Goulding finds out more from Chief Executive Emma Mahy. continued...