Innovating with IoT – Smart Grids
Jan Geldmacher, President, Sprint Business takes the stage to discuss Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Grids at the Enteprise IoT Summit in Austin, Texas.
Jan Geldmacher kicks off Day 2 of the Enterprise IoT Summit highlighting that the IoT era is just beginning and that it is time for enterprises to start innovating in this segment. “In the IoT space, we are right now where the World Wide Web was in 1997, when everybody had a web browser but nobody actually really knew how to deal with that.” The executive said that the World Wide Web offered many innovations with the course of the years and that is the case with the Internet of Things. “Now it is the time to start with the innovation and start asking what is next in the enterprise segment.”
Geldmacher highlighted that companies need to take into consideration three megatrends namely changing workforce, globalization and digitalization. The executive also said that legacy network infrastructure was not designed to handle the demands of the new world and the new technologies. “We are talking about an explosion in data volumes, were are talking probably of a factor of 2,400 in the explosion of data volumes in the next 35 years. We are also talking about the requirements of creating latencies that come close to the reaction time of human beings in order to really enable interaction between devices and between devices and human beings.”
The executive also said that the network of the future must be a converged network. It is necessary to combine wireline and wireless capabilities in order to provide the Internet of Things of the future. You also must have high capacity and high speeds in order to deal with the data volume.” Geldmacher also said that future networks should also be multi-spectrum and resilient, and should also offer a high-level of security to protect sensors.
Jan leads Sprint’s national sales and service teams focused on delivering wireless, wireline and IoT solutions to large, global corporations along with small- and medium-sized businesses.
Before joining Sprint, Jan served as chief executive officer of Vodafone Global Enterprise, the London-based business unit responsible for defining the strategy and operational execution of Vodafone’s relationships with multinational corporate customers worldwide.
Jan also served as director of Vodafone’s Enterprise Business Unit, CEO of British Telecom Germany, Member of T-Systems' executive team and head of international networks and joint ventures with Bonn, Germany-based Deutsche Telecom. Prior to that Jan worked in various management and sales positions at European telecom companies. He started his career with AT&T Global Information Solutions (NCR Corp.).
Jan graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of Cologne.
