Deutsche Telekom is taking the “Internet of Things” to the cloud, solving what I believe is a key challenge to more widespread adoption. We’ve all seen the huge prediction for IoT usage over the next five years; but what you don’t see very often is a solution for how those “things” get managed, monitored and secured. This offer solves these challenges along with storage of all the IoT data in the cloud.
But there’s more to what Deutsche Telekom has to say in this area beyond the cloud. Today its solutions focus on four market sectors – industrial automation, vehicle telematics, public sector and retail/commerce.
- Industrial automation includes the cloud of things along with the ability to remotely manage equipment, reducing the cost of having more humans on site. Additionally, the deployment of wireless sensor networks to manage sensors in remote locations in the same way will keep costs down and more quickly identify and correct failures.
- Vehicle telematics offers in-car entertainment for the family in conjunction with the MyKIDIO app and BMW’s Kid’s Cockpit. Utilizing broadband connections to and within the car, passengers can be entertained while on a road trip.
- Public-sector solutions focus on parking and lighting. The management of these resources remotely ensures availability of parking solutions and notifications to potential parkers, and lighting management to ensure safety and energy conservation.
- Retail and commerce is currently focused on vending machine telemetry solutions. In other words, just-in-time vending machine inventory control. Along with real-time routing, this solution will reduce the time needed to check machines visually, only sending someone to refill them when it is actually warranted.
Beyond these standard solutions, there are also vertical-market areas of focus available through partner relationships. The markets covered via these partnerships include consumer electronics, energy, health care, industrial automation, public sector, retail and commerce, security, transport and logistics, and vehicle telematics.
A European partner program allows partners that offer a machine-to-machine product in one country to expand throughout the European Deutsche Telekom footprint and utilize their local sales channels. The offers have already been proven to work in conjunction with Deutsche Telekom services in at least country. This is a great idea for Deutsche Telekom to expand its offer and partners to expand their geographical presence and sales channels.
The Business Wall of Fame contest took place earlier this year identifying new ideas for IoT solutions within eight countries in Europe. The winners become part of a Deutsche Telekom marketing campaign. Great way to look for new ideas and expand the portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ZSCdzY2Ug
These programs are interesting to me because they show how mobile operators think outside the norm on the topic of IoT. The innovation contest and partner programs are a win-win on both sides, providing immediate expansion of target markets and sales channels without a huge investment in market expansion for the solution providers – many of which are are startups or small enterprises with limited budgets. The increase portfolio of options drives more network usage for Deutsche Telekom. As mentioned above, the growth of IoT will strongly rely on service offers that provide management, monitoring and security. Expecting enterprises or consumers to sort all of this out on their own will only delay IoT growth.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
