Podcast: Building a Better Business Case for IoT
Posted on 3 December 2020 23 December 2021
You've got the right technology for your IoT application, but do your customers expect free services? Listen as Nick Earle, Eseye CEO tells Jeremy Cowan and George Malim how to build the business case.
Jeremy Cowan
Hi, and welcome to the latest Tech Trends podcast brought to you by IoT Now, along with VanillaPlus, and The Evolving Enterprise. My name is Jeremy Cowan, and it's a pleasure to bring you today's sometimes serious, sometimes light-hearted look at digital transformation for enterprises worldwide. In a moment, our first two guests will join me looking at what's in the tech news. Then our second guest promises to tell us how to speed up digital transformation using the Internet of Things. Later, I'm talking to a man who rode a motorbike from Vienna to Beijing no less, like you do, and he did it to improve the IoT. Now he's planning to do something like it all over again. His plans may have been slowed by reports of an undercooked bat but he's not a man to be deterred for long, so stick around and we'll try to get to the bottom of the story later. And finally, in What The Tech we'll share what's made each of us smile or just shake our heads lately. So, let me introduce two people whose expert opinions are worth half an hour of anyone's time. The first is George Malim, the managing editor of IoT Now magazine. George, welcome.
George Malim
Hi, happy to be here.
Good to have you here. And our second guest is Nick Earle, CEO of Eseye. Nick, a warm welcome to you, too.
Nick Earle
Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for the invite.
Not at all. Nick. I've tried to describe Eseye in about 10 words, and I came up with something like, the company is a mobile virtual network operator dedicated to the Internet of Things. Am I wide of the mark?
No, that's pretty good. There's a job in marketing beckoning for you. If the IoT now gig doesn't work out Jeremy, just give me a call.
Okay, gentlemen, there's a lot to get through. So, let's start with the headlines. George, what's caught your eye in the news lately?
For me, it's Microsoft's movements over the last week or so, which is seeing it preparing to acquire Metaswitch. Metaswitch is a kind of mid-market, smallish telecoms vendor that's got highly unique attributes, actually, it was established in the in the early 80s. I think it could have been the late 70s. And they've been moving along and in recent years, being highly innovative in virtualisation of core networks, and they have several advanced virtual network functions available. So, on one level, you think 'So what? Here's a midsize company being bought by a massive company.' But when you add it to the fact that Microsoft also recently spent nearly a billion dollars acquiring an evolved packet core specialist called Affirmed Networks, it looks like Microsoft is making another move into telecoms infrastructure. I don't think this means it's looking to become a telco. Although that's always in the back of people's minds, particularly when you compare them with Amazon and Google. But it's clear, to me anyway, that it's heralding a greater commitment to telecoms, beyond software and probably trying to bolster the Azure offering. I think Metaswitch is significant because of its customer base, to be honest, they have their on the vendor list of AT&T's domain 2.0, and they're also a supplier to Sprint. So, I think that that's probably one of the major motivations in addition to that virtualization technology that Metaswitch does so strongly. I think it's significant that Microsoft looks like it wants to play a wider role in telecoms. And I think it's clear that the operators are looking in a sort of more IT focused way. I mean, I think it was AT&T that said that it wanted 75% virtualisation by the Year End this year. So, I think that's quite interesting. And that all plays together. I guess, one of the obvious questions is why isn't Microsoft buying Nokia again? Perhaps it didn't work out so well last time, and maybe it just doesn't feel the need to have everything and it thinks it can play in a stronger fashion by stitching together different assets that have the new stuff, as it were, that can potentially enable it to be a cloud-based telecoms provider. So I think that's very interesting and one to watch, and the thing to really watch is what they buy next, as they put that portfolio together in a more cohesive way, which will reveal what their strategy is.
Just briefly on that, George. I mean, a lot of analysts have been writing off telecoms and writing it's obituary. So that clearly isn't the case. At least not in Microsoft's view. What's your take on that?
They probably don't see it as telecoms. I would think they probably see it as as cloud infrastructure or something like that. So, the writing off of telecoms is potentially just a change of name.
Yeah. Nick, what have you seen in the news that's been interesting?
Well, actually, I was going to pick up on what George was just talking about, because I also picked up some stories about Microsoft, and in particular, their move towards 5G at the edge. And I was just going to react to what George said. I think the reason why they wouldn't buy Nokia is because the hyperscale cloud providers – so AWS, Microsoft, Google, etc. – they actually make money from monetising data, and 80% of data is going to the edge. So where are they going next? Well, you guessed it, they're going to the edge but what do they bump into at the edge? They bump into very tightly coupled hardware and software. So, in the case of Ericsson, Nokia, others, you actually have hardware that powers, the mobile network operators, for example, that's coupled very tightly with their own software, proprietary software. And now, as 5G opens up a whole new raft of business applications, so for instance, augmented reality, virtual reality, the idea of holding your iPad up against a truck engine on the side of the highway, and being able to get an augmented reality view of the bill of materials and look at all the sensors and what's going on, and be able to do that from 400 miles away and diagnose what the fault is. This is an enormous business opportunity. But what it means is that the data because there's so much of it has to be processed at the edge, it's just not economical to backhaul it particularly over cellular networks to the centre. So what you're actually seeing, not only are they making a play for the data at the edge with specific software, developer tools, and etc. But they don't care, as George says, about the hardware, but it doesn't mean that the hardware becomes commodity because it's at the edge where the specialist sensors collide with the hardware and some of that data has to be backhauled, say 20% of it has to be backhauled. So cellular collides with Bluetooth, LoRa, Sigfox, etc. at the edge. And so what we're seeing in Eseye, and it's actually one of our lines of business, is the need for specialist hardware design, not off-the-shelf commodity hardware. So, use cases where the hardware is actually 70 to 80% of the business case of IoT. And it's the ability to do the crunching at the edge. So we're, it's not so much that, you know, maybe 10 years ago, we were talking about the replacement of the data centre. And now what we have is a distributed model where there are centres of data and those centres data are at the edge. And I think what you're seeing with Microsoft and others is actually a reinvention, or a mass disruption, of the IT architecture stack at the edge of the network, which is exactly where the action is right now, which is called IoT.
Yeah. Well, talking about reinvention, the thing that I've noticed was a piece in The Evolving Enterprise. We wrote about the story under the headline, "Pandemic triggers some firms to speed transformation", because it seems perhaps counter-intuitive at first, but the COVID virus is actually encouraging an awful lot of people to look very much harder at their transformation plans. As I say there's a new report on TheEE.io that says, more than one in three executives in the US and China currently reckon that COVID is pushing them to digitally transform their business faster. That's based on a survey that was organised by California-based Wind River, and they say that enterprises wanting to transform are putting more than 50% extra investment into areas like 5G containers and cloud native technologies. And because of COVID-19, something like 63%, according to their survey of these major enterprises in China are actively increasing expenditure now on 5G projects and in the US, it's 37% are spending more on 5G because of COVID. So, I think that with such a large percentage of C-suite execs looking at how to modify their strategies, clearly Coronavirus is not just a delaying effect. It's having quite the reverse for some people. This is based on a survey of 400 plus senior tech execs; so it's not it's not a small sample.
It's not insignificant. And these are companies with turnovers between, I think $100 million and up to a billion dollars per year. So, again, they're significant players. Anyway, the report covers enterprises in telecoms, healthcare, automotive, aerospace, manufacturing. It just stood out to me as indicative of what is happening to industry even whilst we're under lockdown. I don't know if you had any thoughts on that, either of you.
It's Nick; you know there's an old adage in the IT industry that you don't overtake on the straights you overtake on the corners, a Formula One comparison. And I think that's actually what's happening, it's that we're definitely in a corner. In fact, it seems like a series of chicanes at the moment, but what is happening is that some people are preparing to overtake and some people will not go as fast. So, I think there'll be multiple cases where this has happened. If you look back over a 30 – 40 year period, and I think it's happening again. And potentially to your point, this one's going to be one of the biggest ones so far.
Yeah, I'd just add that it's hard to think of a negative when you look at IoT and COVID, you can't really see why people wouldn't adopt more IoT and more digitally transformed ways of operating, given the current situation and the likelihood that this probably isn't a one time event as well. You know, this is probably a situation in which we have pandemics for, you know, possibly future years. I'm not a scientist, so I probably have gone out a little bit on a limb here. I can see people working at home more, I can see people working together less. So the automation that digital transformation enables is probably a given. So I struggle to see, apart from from a financial perspective, how the pandemic will limit uptake of IoT.
Yeah. Nick, let's have a look at one thing that we particularly wanted to have a look under the hood for. We wanted to understand how to smooth out IoT deployments. Internet of Things discussions often seem to focus on technology problems, and business models sometimes get overlooked or sidelined or dealt with last, which can be just as big an issue. What in your view are the challenges today with business models that are trying to embrace IoT?
Yes, thanks, Jeremy. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, there's a lot of data that supports the fact that we're obsessed with the technology and actually not focusing anywhere near enough on the business model. Probably the biggest data is that if you actually look at IoT adoption, we've got about 10 billion non-consumer, non-cell phone, you know iPad devices, out there. But, you know, I was in Cisco, as you know, for 13 years and my boss John Chambers famously said there's gonna be 50 billion by 2020. Well, here we are. And if you take out the cell phones, it's 10. So we're at 20%, which is classic pre-chasm; Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm. And actually, if we drill down on the 10 it's really a lot of those 10 billion of new devices, people have designed the device to create a new experience. And people have paid for that device because there's nothing like it in the marketplace. But the big opportunity to cross the chasm is the 80%. And in the case of the 80%, the challenge is that people won't pay for the functionality and therefore the business justification is different. Let me give you an example. You can buy a new gadget, you know, a camera or whatever it is that's IoT-enabled, a healthcare device, and you will pay for it because it's cool, and it's got all these features and you can access it by your phone, like your lawn mower or whatever. But when you talk about large global companies that sell 80% of things, that consumers now – probably accelerated by what we just talked about – consumers are expecting these capabilities to be built into the device. We expect our car to have a series of interactive services. We expect a coffee machine to have a large digital display on it, which will allow us to not only select the coffee, but in the future, get information about, you know, where the beans came from, is it fair trade, calorie counts, etc. So, the point is that people won't pay for the features. Now that suddenly says, 'Oh, there's a different business justification, pre chasm to post chasm'. Yes, we've got to simplify the technology. And we've talked a lot about that in the past. But if you actually look at what are the dominant business models that people are using, particularly for global rollouts, which again is where 80% of the things are – cross the chasm with the big guys – the business justification is actually not on front-end features. It's on back-end processes. So supply chain optimisation, the ability to build one single SKU globally and roll it out, or warranty avoidance for car companies. The business justification becomes around business critical back-end processes, not on 'I can sell a gadget for more money because it's got cool features'.
That's really interesting, Nick. I just wanted to pick up on what you're talking about the business models, and things becoming expectations rather than wants and needs because it's a kind of baseline requirement. Against that, how do you create the business case for IoT if everyone's expecting it as a free bolt-on?
Yeah, yeah, so if all products become experiences, and are sold on the experience not the product, which is why they get sold as an annuity, not a transactional value. And you then think, 'Well, okay, I can create a business case, but it has an interesting technology implication'. If I'm a car company, and obviously Tesla's a good example here. If I'm a car company and I want to save millions of dollars by getting rid of all my repair shops, what I really want is the ability to have one piece of technology in the car, which I can sell all the way around the world. Because that will save me on my manufacturing, it will save me on my supply chain, and I want to be able to get rid of all of my repair shops around the world. But the point about it is that you do need global connectivity. If you're selling a product on features and 40% of your customers buy the product, that's okay. But if you want to get rid of all of your repair shops, or you want to optimise all of your manufacturing to save money, 40% isn't enough; you want to go for as close to 100% as you can. So the moment you've crossed the chasm, not only is the business justification moved from the front end to the back end, but also what you actually want is a global solution. And actually closing the loop, it's the lack of global IoT solutions by having a fragmented model where you have to have different SIMs for cellular inside different products. You have permanent roaming restrictions, you have the need for localisation in some countries, roaming in others; it's this fragmented technology mishmash, that's actually stopped us from crossing the chasm. So, whoever solves that problem of having a truly global solution will actually free up tens of millions of dollars for the back-end processes, which in turn will mean that we get to the 80% and we cross the chasm. So I think that is the big thing that has to happen. What it essentially means is the user, the enterprise in this case, has to be in control to actually say, I want a global platform, and I want to be able to set the rules so I can optimise between service provision into the device and low cost. I don't want to have to be forced to choose between the two and have a fragmented solution. So what we actually want, you mentioned the MVNO, Jeremy at the beginning. Maybe what we want is a VMNO, which is a single virtual mobile network operator, which actually, is a combination of all the mobile network operators put together into a platform to deliver a single service out to market.
You mentioned the enterprise setting the rules, and that really sounds like the standard MVNO model. How is that differing at Eseye?
Yeah, so it's not. On the surface, it does sound like an MVNO model, but actually, let's just double click on the technology, a lot of the listeners will be very technical. One of the key bits of functionality that does IMSI switching into the device is the SM-SR functionalities of the subscription management service routing functionality. Understanding eUICC definition as defined by the GSMA, the eUICC transfers from MNO A to MNO B, but you're basically transferring the ownership and the connection from one MNO to another. So it facilitates the transfer like passing the rugby ball from one to the other. But from a user's point of view, you're now dealing with two MNOs, and you may have two contracts. What we've done at Eseye – we're not unique in doing it, but they're very few people who have – is we've abstracted the SM-SR into a single global application instance, which we run over network. So what we do is we interconnect southbound to about 20 MNOs. We do the SM-SR functionality in our application platform along with a single billing engine, a single support, a single pane of glass for management, and then what happens is the user, the enterprise can actually set the switching rules themselves in the application platform. So most MVNOs don't have their own SM-SR, and all the application functionality that goes with it. That's why I call it VMNO, because it looks very similar to the application stack of an MNO. But it has this ability, and in our case it's a SIM that has 10 slots, so we can do three bootstraps and other IMSIs, the ability to do dynamic real-time switching of the IMSI between MNOs and have a back-end, cloud-based capability to set SM-SR switching rules for the enterprise. That combination of features essentially puts the enterprise in control, and allows them to pick the best MNO for that country or that device, and be able to seamlessly switch within it without ever having to pay twice, and with only ever having one invoice for all their connectivity. So a bit of a deep answer, but I do believe that in order to achieve 100% global connectivity, which is fundamental prerequisite for the business case, you actually need an abstructed SM-SR capability in a single application instance.
Okay Nick, so moving on slightly. Are you seeing a kind of growing maturity from large enterprises in their RFPs? To the extent that maybe that they're looking at IoT from a platform perspective to future-proof their solutions? Is that something you're starting to see?
Yeah, George, just starting. I mean, I think we are crossing the chasm. Actually, we reviewed it this morning, we had a sales meeting this morning. And we looked at 50 RFPs. We're a global company, we have 2,000 customers. We're in seven countries. But we looked at 50 RFPs, and we can now see five of them where the enterprise has specifically stated that whoever responds to the RFP must agree that they will interact if asked or interconnect with the customer's own SM-SR. So now a year ago we didn't see any, and we've been talking to people like Gartner about this, and they say, Yes, they're starting to see it. So is it there yet? No. But we're starting to see RFPs where customers explicitly state that they are they want to build, operate, manage whatever it is, but they want to control the switching, they want multi-IMSI agnostic switching. And I think that is the signs that this is going to get adopted. That has some pretty big implications on the market. But it is maybe it's it's one of those chicane moments that we talked about earlier. Maybe this is what happens is that the users will take control as we come out of this chicane, and they'll say I want seamless interoperability. I don't want walled gardens of roaming agreements, I want to be able to have a device that connects 100% anywhere in the world, any GPS coordinates, and I just want to switch between MNOs and I want to control the switching. Certainly for my own background in Cisco, networking exploded when it became easy and it was fully interoperable, and I think that's what we're heading to with IoT — it hasn't been fully interoperable, eUICC example, and I think what we're now seeing is the ability for people to get seamless interoperability controlled by the user. So starting, not there yet, but I feel pretty sure it's going to continue, and in fact accelerate as we come out.
Thanks, Nick. It really sounds as though it is coming together, and I guess people can find out more about this work at your website, which is eseye.com.
www.eseye.com. Thanks for the plug. I forgot to do it. It's not like me, Jeremy.
Now it's time for us to have a slight change of gear and you'll pardon the pun because it's time for us to hear about the digital Silk Road or Silk Road 4.0 initiative, and what that means for IoT. Let me introduce you to my Austrian friend Dr. Philipe Reinisch. He's ridden a bike from Europe to China, and now, although he tells me he's absolutely sane, he's going to do something like it all over again. I can also tell you, he's chairman of the Joint Working Group for Austrian standards in the Internet of Things. He's a great networker, and he clearly loves a challenge. Philipe, welcome.
Philipe Reinisch
Thank you, Jeremy. It's great to be here. One thing I would like to mention is I'm also doing other things. So for example, I'm also managing one of the largest IoT projects. It's called IoT4CPS. And it's all about the IoT and security in autonomous cars and industry 4.0.
A man of many parts. Thank you Philipe. Tell us. Why did you ride to Beijing from Vienna? And what on earth did this have to do with IoT?
Well, you know, Jeremy, I'm a down to Earth person in terms of when it comes to technology. I always believe that technology has some limitations. But mostly, technologies are designed in laboratories. So what happens if you take IoT out to the field out, you know, to extremes, and see what happens if you use these technologies in foreign environments like foreign countries, foreign legal restrictions, and this is where Silkroad 4.0 came up. I was equipping a high tech motorcycle with several IoT devices. And then I drove all the way from Austria to China to meet IoT experts, stakeholders in the area of Internet of Things and digital technologies. And what I wanted to do is, I wanted to connect people and technologies all the way, all over the world, from Austria to China.
So what did your first journey achieve?
Well, there is this assumption that one knows everything. And that's one of the big eye openers for myself. For one, I think I've heard quite a lot of things about IoT already or about modern technologies, but how people are using these technologies are totally different. For example, in Western Europe, IoT many times is about increasing efficiency, creating transparency with the data you gain. But there are countries where this is absolutely not desirable. So in these local areas, they don't want to increase any transparency. They don't want to reduce the workload of people because they have such a high unemployment rate. So the users of IoT in these regions of the world are totally different. It's more about fake products, about counterfeiting, about briberies and making things sturdy and reliable.
Wow. So the the definition is completely different. When will you be making your next Silk Road journey, given the problems that we're experiencing with COVID-19? And how will that be different, do you think?
Yeah, that's I think one of the big questions that many people have. How is the world changing within the next month after this COVID crisis? At the moment I am organising another tour travelling all the way from Austria to China again, maybe not even stopping in China but making a round-the-world trip. What I would like to do is to create a high tech caravan so not only me travelling alone, but having different vehicles travelling with me; cars, buses, motorcycles, connected vehicles. I would like to connect the stakeholders all around the world in this kind of giant open business delegation. The question is how we can do this or when we can do this? This is a little bit uncertain, but at the moment, we are preparing a virtual journey. We would like to make virtual broadcasts where we connect people from different regions of the world in a series of events travelling from Europe to China.
That's brilliant. So it's a kind of virtual caravan along the Silk Road. What would you like the pod's listeners to do to support you in this, Philipe?
Well, we're always looking for interesting technologies that could fit in into this high-tech delegation and this high-tech caravan. So, we're still looking for partners who want to partner up with us in creating this kind of unique around the world trip. Everybody who is interested, please have a look at our website. It's silkroad40.com I'm very happy to hear from all of you.
Well, it sounds inspirational. I'm intrigued and will certainly go and have a look at your next round of plans. I wish you every success with this Philipe, and I hope that you will want to come back and tell us all about it once you've gone on your second trip. Please do come back and let us know.
Thank you very much Jeremy. It was a great pleasure being here.
Good to have you, thanks Philipe. Okay, we're running out of time now, but let's wrap this up with a smile or something tech-based that made you both stop and think. George, are you laughing? Or are you shaking your head right now?
A bit of both, I'm afraid. I'm back on bad science and nonsense, and never trusting a hippie in relation to 5G. Where I live in the West of England there's a town called Glastonbury which is famous for its festival, but also for the number of alternative people that live in the area who classify themselves as wizards and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. The town council in Glastonbury has recently published a 5G report which has been approved, and the Council is going to try and prevent the deployment of 5G in Glastonbury. Now for international listeners, town councils don't really have the power to do that. So it's not really going to happen. But the council's report has put forward some crazy recommendations, namely that people invest in bio shields, whatever they are. Particularly one, which is a £283 USB stick, which offers, I'm reading from the spiel here, it offers proprietary holographic layer technology to enable quantum biological shielding technology. I recognise the words, but not in that order.
(Laughter). I have no idea what any of that meant.
Yeah, and they also read recommend something called shungite, which they describe as a gem but it's actually a rock that's been polished. And I'm not really sure what healing properties it has on account of not being a geologist, but this is really unhelpful in the UK. I mean, there's been more than 90 attacks on phone mast during the UK lockdown as people blame COVID on mobile phones, and this sort of thing from a from a town council is completely unhelpful. The report is just riddled with examples of bad science and half reported facts. So, I don't know whether to laugh or cry about it, I'm afraid.
Nick, what have you spotted?
Well, yeah, perhaps not as crazy as that. But you could argue it is pretty crazy. So I spotted the fact that Zoom is now worth $49 billion, which is more than the entire US airline industry added together. Now, you have to say that there's been multiple stories over the years. It's not really a tough comparison. I think the airline industry is only ever made money twice in its entire history. But this is compared to go company valuations. But typically, share prices are based on not what's happening now, but what people think is going to happen in the future. And so what this appears to say is that people do not believe that we will be going back to work in the same way, you know, the new normal debate. And I must admit, in our own company, that we asked everybody to work from home around the world, and everybody did and the company carried on going. Now we're having the debate about, you know, making the offices safe and, and letting everybody go back. But we were having these bizarre conversations saying, well, will they actually come back? I think people are quite enjoying it. And, obviously, some will, but a lot of people are saying, you know, I actually can do my job over Zoom or Teams or, or whatever it is. So this has some pretty big implications, particularly for the property space, and there's all these assumptions that you know, you have to commute into London, you have to sit in this room all together, and then you have to go home again. Maybe actually, that will finally fragment, and we will actually get a completely different model. And so people will need smaller offices. We will use zoom and associated products. And I think that's what people are betting on. That could well have some very, very significant implications for where companies are located. Because why not live and work where you want to, as opposed to, you know, buy a tiny flat in London for half a million pounds, just because you need to be near where your work is. And I think we could actually see a significant change finally, in that lockdown model, so to speak, that we've had for years and years and years.
I think you're probably right. You're talking about smaller offices. I want to talk about a smaller person. Gentlemen, I couldn't help feeling some sympathy for one child in California this week and you won't be surprised to hear I'm talking, of course, of Elon Musk's new son with his partner, the singer Grimes. I just want to know, is it child abuse when you name him, X Æ A-12. Certainly, the state of California seem to think so and he's not best friends with them already. I think that's something to do with a factory, not a son, but they stepped in, but only to rule out the use of numerals. You couldn't make this stuff up. So Elon, and the couple indeed, named chose to rename him using roman numerals for 12. Obviously, that's going to make it a great deal easier for the lad to find pre-printed t-shirts with his name on at Disney or to book a restaurant table when he's older, but being the billionaire's son he's probably got people for that.
I found the most amazing, unbelievable part of that story is that Elon, you immediately think oh, Elon, it's Elon Musk, you know, he has a habit of doing crazy things. He claimed it was his wife's idea. So to me that is even more unbelievable than the name he gave in the first place, because I do not believe it.
The only comparison I've got is from New Zealand, probably about 10 years ago, when the some poor child was christened Tallula Does the Hula in Hawaii and she had to wait I think till she was about 12 or something and took her parents to court where the judge did almost rule that it was cruelty. And she was entitled to change her name, but it is it well, it's crazy stuff.
Yeah, cruel and unusual. There's a song about it called A Boy Named Sue, but we won't dwell on that. Anyway, enough of all of that, let me finish by saying thank you to our earlier guest, Philipe Reinisch and to George Malim. Thank you, George.
It's been a pleasure.
And finally to Nick Earle. It's been great to have you, Nick.
Thanks, Jeremy and George. Thanks.
And thank you too, Ladies and Gentlemen. Keep safe. Keep logging on to IoT-Now.com, TheEE.io and VanillaPlus.com for more news. And join us soon for the next Tech Trends Podcast, looking at IoT and enterprise digital transformation. Bye for now.