Who is IoT for, anyway? Guest starring Tom White, MD at Paratus People | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 22

Dan Cunliffe
Hi everyone and thanks for tuning into the IoT Insider. My name is Dan Cunliffe and I’m Managing Director and co-founder of Pangea. Today I’m joined by Tom White, who is the founder of Paratus People and an expert at matching businesses with the right IoT talent. Tom, very, very welcome to the show.

Tom White
Dan, thank you for having me, pleased to be here.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, awesome. I’m going to let Tom just give us a bit of background to Paratus. And the awesome work they do, particularly, you know, in the IoT, and the work that’s, you know, quite quite often probably helped a lot of my customers or helped a lot of people that I’ve worked with in the past. So maybe, maybe give us a bit of background to you guys.

Tom White
Yeah, sure, absolutely. So Dan, I come from a pretty technical background myself, so at university, I studied embedded Linux and kernel engineering. But somehow meandered into the wonderful world of staffing, headhunting, and recruitment. Around 12/13 years ago, now, and spent a lot of time working with pay TV operators, and people building next gen set top boxes. So that’s how I got into IoT with, you know, million sub set top boxes, and PVRs, with lots of lots of different inputs and outputs, and eventually set up my own business up, having exited a company in 2015, Paratus. Really, to focus on, you know, the fourth industrial revolution, so IoT, connected devices, connecting environments as well as devices. And we, well, we saw a need, myself and the management team, that there just wasn’t a business around that had a real end to end focus from grassroots in IoT, there was lots of people kind of talking about IoT as a buzzword when there was blockchain and machine learning and AI. And you just heard people talking about this stuff, but never really actually knowing what it was, but just knowing that people wanted to talk about it. And but but it was all quite topical. So from a talent acquisition point of view, there was lots of companies building IoT teams, or, or certainly wanting to do some business transformation and automate some of their processes or some of their environments, and we really set up because it was difficult to find those people and and also manage some of the projects. So what Paratus does is it’s a hybrid between your traditional agency model, where we will find people that the client manage’s and on boards either permanently or through contractors, or we manage projects for our customers, anything along the software development lifecycle, solely within the IoT ecosystem.

Dan Cunliffe
And thanks, Tom, like, you know, guys, that’s why Tom is an absolute perfect guest for us today, because we’re looking to talk a little bit about a bit, I mean, a little bit back to basics, or kind of, you know, who’s the IoT for anyway? I mean, I remember. So we didn’t start too far apart. I started Pangea, also 2015. But early-ish, well, the thing at company house says November 2014, but we actually really stopped playing golf, and actually focusing on a business around about March of 2015. And one of the things I really empathise with you is that Yeah, there was there was a lot of talk about various different things, even back then. And I feel like we were, we were all sort of really trying to push a lot of people into the world a bit more. But now I would, I would say that I would argue that there’s more pull than ever really, in terms of why and when people need to adopt it, and actually bring it to life. And so yeah, which is why I’m pretty stoked to have you on so we can talk a little bit about some of the back to basics, who it’s for how people use it. I’d love to hear your thoughts on like, what skill sets are actually needed sometimes to make this happen. So maybe we we kind of start there and talk a little bit about, you know, kind of, who do we think it’s for? And you know, it’ll be it is too easy to say everyone because one of the things that we spoke about at Pangea in the early days was that actually it is very difficult to start a business that is able to deliver IoT, end to end for everybody. It’s quite hard. I mean, when you look at some of the big players out there, the big MNOs, your big software houses, none of them really own the space end to end. There’s quite a bit of collaboration. I guess, from your perspective, you would tend to help all of them right? In terms of niche either providing the right person for the right for the right job.

Tom White
Yeah, Dan, it’s a great question. I think it is easy to say everyone and everything. But it’s true, because there’s almost a limitless amount of markets and areas that can be Yeah, involved and affected by an IoT device or by a derivative of IoT, we’re talking from a digital twin perspective or others, right. But it’s funny to say that because I actually wrote down just on my phone, some of the hot topics that have come up in our podcasts recently and some of the clients that we’ve spoken about and, and I think some of the emerging markets that we see for IoT use cases are the sports industry, surveillance, aircraft, some air quality, these are some of those new use cases, everyone, everyone has spoken in the past about, you know, IIoT, industrial or medtech. But, you know, there’s some, there’s some fantastic initiatives that are coming out there now. And I’m never kind of cease to be amazed at how many other different types of industries can use IoT in some form. I think just in general, you know, even though it sounds like a cop out, when people say everything, it really is everything, but it’s just what, what’s hot today, and I think sometimes when things are hot, there tends to be that domino effect of other people getting involved in and trying to jump onto that bandwagon, and then it’s the next flavour of the month, which just happens to be another area and another industry.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, no, I would agree, I think, to try and make it sort of real or kind of examples for people listening in particular, you know, you can probably go through some of the sectors and, and really sort of help them understand where to go. I mean, for us, you know, we sell predominantly intelligent mobile data, or IoT connectivity however you want to kind of term it, and we’re finding that actually, yeah, you know, it is easy to say, but it is true, the sectors are all using it. And also, they’re using it in a variety of ways. So particularly, you look at your small business market, where guys are trying to understand what the differentiator is for them. But quite often, it’s, you know, we had a client who we would term as a kind of a small business, probably spending sub 200 pounds a month with us, because a lot of our stuffs recurring, they spent nearly 3 million in the last 12 months. So they went from sub 200 a month, kind of spend to 3 million in the last 12 months. That’s because they used some of the ideas we’re giving them in their particular sectors to drive things forward. And really kind of open up, the opportunity was particularly in education, actually, in this case, where they were, they were able to use some of their contacts and just provide something a bit different to what was what was kind of out there. You know, and sort of moving through the gears you look at, for me, it’s really about sitting down with some of these companies who, whether they’ve tried to give it a go in IoT or they sort of haven’t, they’re all selling to sectors where it is possible, from my perspective at least, to connect that device or to use what that device is learning from a data perspective to optimise something. It’s happening, whether whether they’re doing it, or whether one of their competitors are actually engaged with it. So we spend a lot of time probably showing a lot of our partners where we think these opportunities are and then they’re kind of amazed is maybe too strong, but I think they are surprised that actually, you know, your traditional way of working is almost, you know, 10 fold the number of opportunities when you bring in IoT to your conversation.

Tom White
Well, fantastic numbers, right. I mean, what a great customer for you to have. I mean, what’s that in terms of the percentage, right? I mean, it’s Yeah, thousands of percent. Yeah. I think 100% I want to touch on something you mentioned about the skill sets as well, because I think this could be quite relevant. So certainly, you know, here in the UK, we’ve been affected as, the world have with the pandemic. But equally, we decided some years ago, to leave the EU. And then we’ve had some various other events happening recently, which have caused a real catalyst for change in terms of training, cross training of people from other sectors into IoT, which is massively needed. And I think, you know, things that are in demand at the moment because I think this is really important are, you know, your grassroots embedded people’s software developers that can actually programme to a device, and people that understand hardware, through up to data, so data is super critical data engineers, data scientists, people that can understand the collation manipulation, and use of data that we’re harvesting from all of these sensors, right? And then I would say finally, product is really important because after all, it’s a product. It’s something that’s going to market and how we go about selling that. So those are the things that we see as the most hot right now in the IoT industry. And, and something where there is a lack of talent, and there is a lack of people who have discernible experience from a commercial grade, right. So we always look for commercial grade experience as do our clients. Because there’s a lot of hobbyist type people that might have played about this, but unless you’ve done it at enterprise level, then it’s a very different story. But it’s interesting to say that because I think there’s a lot of people that we see coming across into this market from other areas I kicked off earlier talking about, you know, me coming from the set top box industry into IoT, there’s lots of people that are transcending into, into IoT, because of this, grove and astronomical paradigm shift that we see that.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, I have a great example of that actually is a client that we’re busy working with they two, two or three years ago, they were one of the leaders in hosted telephony in the UK telecoms, actually, they did a bit around Europe as well, particularly selling the handset side and then doing the software on site. And they actually started another business, same same board, same everything, to focus on narrowband gateways, that sort of model where sensors was a part of their sell. And it’s just fascinating that, you know, they were in a fairly decent market already, which now hosted and Hosted Voice. And that sort of model is quite strong already. But to have the foresight, or the or the bravery to go and say, do you know what, I’m gonna try another growth market, because I believe there’s something to go there and kind of, it’s the same people like, you know, definitely the same people, just have different email addresses. Going into that route, and particularly focusing on well do you know what, and may not go down the route of connecting the devices, which is where Pangea comes in to help them, they’ve gone down the route of the devices. But when they sell, you know, several 1000 sensors a week to a water company or utilities company, someone from your business needs to be employed, in order to control that stuff, or to create the right to create the right feedback or to make the solution work. So now I find it, I find it interesting that you are getting more people kind of, I don’t want to call it a pivot, because I think it’s a little bit more than that. You got to actually be quite committed to what you’re going to do in this stuff. But people, I suppose taking on the challenge, you know, of saying cool, I’m gonna go for it and start something in smart.

Tom White
Yeah. Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think, you know, this is a train that’s not stopping and is picking up pace, right. And I think sometimes people talk about, well, where are all these IoT devices? Where is everything that we spoken about for the last so many years? And I think well they’re there and they’re coming, I think we need a common platform. I think standardisation may help with that. But I think it’s linking everything together to enable the amount of infiltration that this can have upon society. Because I think there’s some cases at the moment, some other areas as I touched upon earlier, but I think once we’ve ironed that out, then we’re going to be away. And I always call this story of, of Jeff Bezos right when he was going to investors, the early stages of Amazon apparently pitch 50 investors. And the predominant thing that people came back and said was what’s the internet? And I think, you know, that still happens. And I think eventually, we’re just gonna not call it IoT. And we’re gonna get there and what have you.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, I don’t think we’ll I mean, we’ll call it something. I mean, people often ask me, what, what do you do, and then you, you kind of begin with IoT, and you explain, you drill backwards, and you like, explain how things connect. And then suddenly you you get into this world of like, Oh, so you know, through automation, and you know, what happens to jobs or various different things, but then you forget, actually, we’re driving more jobs in other ways, because of the ability to be more automatic. I mean, maybe we talk a little bit about that, you know, what kind of businesses or what kind of advantages Do you think come with the IoT, like, you know, the first one will probably come to my mind would be or just the fact that we can get as much data as possible. It’s, I find it slightly satisfying that on the radio, they talk on the radio, right? It’s internet based radio, but they talk on the radio about air quality not being good enough for people to live in, or they talk about, you know, making sure that you switch to smart metering. And this stuff is, we’re now at like consumer level where the messaging is moved to something that is, you know, true IoT to help things better. And these things that help you get better. It’s just that they just take more data, you know, they just learn so much about your environment and give you the tools to make better decisions. And like sort of at the granular level of it, that’s what we’re trying to achieve, right? We’re trying to make sure that sensors of various devices are telling us, hey, this is not great, do something about it. And then maybe we enable other things to do to do something about it. From your perspective, when you when you look at the resources or the, or the needs for that sort of environment, what do you guys go for? What do you see?

Tom White
Yeah, so I think it’s a great question. I think, predominantly, IoT is about data. But it’s simply, as you say, right. But it’s important that people understand what they do with that data. So collecting data for the sake of collecting data, is is a thankless task, it’s the interpretation and the use of that data. But I think other things that people can do with IoT is, you know, pulling up infrastructure whereby you weren’t able to do that previously. And I think it comes down to battery technology, that comes down to the fact that you don’t have to have things powered to the mains, and with the likes of energy harvesting, you know, some of the advancements there, we’re able to produce sensors and produce devices that can send small amounts of information, but just the required amounts of information for many years without being touched. And I think that opens up so many different fields into different areas that that can be used. So I think that’s really, really important. It’s really important that people can kind of think outside the box with with what that means. And I think that’s where, if you look at the World Economic Forum, and, and, and Wikipedia, Funny enough, right? They all, they all update what IoT is fairly frequently. And if you look at the different citations, it’s the it’s the element of connecting environments, to the internet, rather than just devices and connecting environments is a whole nother ballgame. And that can only and that can only be done through these.

Dan Cunliffe
Well, I mean, I can give you a great example. So I’m working like and probably to your point like it’s just full of flows the examples because I’m seeing it all the time. And so one of my partners is working on how do we integrate our you know, the kind of boring bin collection, which is like a Tuesday in my case? Yeah. So how do we integrate the bin collection into a more on demand model, where you had a boozy weekend, all your mates have left, you know, literally gone for it, and there’s so much rubbish, why can’t you pull that bin into the, into the collection the very next day, because it’s better for the environment. And it actually suits a lot of things to happen. Equally, people who’ve got kids, nappies, for example, this sort of stuff, how do you bring the bin more into an on demand pickup so that it’s part of the part of the transport layer, right. And so these guys have worked on some incredible battery technology to make this stuff last, well, close to five years, but actually has a rechargeable, so within a day, you can recharge it again, and it goes for another long period of time. Push the button a bit like the old Amazon, back to Jeff, but the little smart button to reorder the same thing, press the button, and the bin now becomes part of their pickup, whether it’s your day or not yet, and they will find a way to come and get it based on you know, this is very important to collect this rubbish now versus maybe not being able to do it. That sort of stuff super fascinating, because I think that drives just all the efficiencies that that we that make it real life as well.

Tom White
Yeah. 100% there’s a great example. In fact, I have a friend of mine that has a bin company doing something very similar by putting sensors in the lid right? And, and I think you’ve touched on a really good point there because yes, that would work well, right, it would be fairly simple to have a sensor and a bin to know when it’s full. In the same way you can have a sensor in some freight or shipping container to look at the insides of that, you know, let’s say its fruit and its perishing, right. And then you can divert that shipping container somewhere to closer land. So it doesn’t spoil. But the problem that you have is that the infrastructure needs to pick it up. So it’s all very well and good having this but you know, are the bin men able to come and pick that up on demand because you know, my bin guys they turn up when they want to turn up regardless of the schedule. So I think we’re in a constant race between technology, the advancements of technology, IoT tech, what’s there, but also what we currently have. And I think that’s another challenge that perhaps we need to try and overcome in general.

Dan Cunliffe
Let’s um, if we can just kind of thinking of where we’ve been. We talked a little bit about back to basics and kind of you know, the examples and how you need to kind of get skilled up for it or where you can focus on. I’m kind of interested just to talk about why a company should start thinking about it? You know, what is? What is the value in adopting an IoT strategy? Or why would you invest in hiring people for it? Why would you invest in working with Paratus, or Pangea, or companies similar that can help to drive that value? Are there any specifics you have on that, or kind of when you when you have those conversations?

Tom White
Well, I think for me, it’s probably the best example of this is digital twin. So to be able to try and replicate something fully functional without actually having to do it, physically, is probably one of the prime examples. So the port of Rotterdam, for instance, was one of the largest digital twin initiatives in Europe of recent times. And I think if a company wants to try and do something innovative, something new, and can use IoT or digital twin setup, to try and replicate that, without necessarily having to actually spend cash on the infrastructure and setting it up to start with, that’s a prime example, where it can work really well. Because, you know, it might, it might not work, it could fail, so on and so forth. So I think that’s a really clear area. The other things that I would look at was, would be really trying to get back to basics, with what you do with customer data, why it’s important, why it’s necessary, of course, you need to, certainly here in the UK, abide by data protection registers and GDPR. But but use of that data and then feeding it back to the customer. So the customer has a better experience has a better journey, that can be done using sensors. Smart stadiums, for instance, right? You know, knowing where and when people are in that stadium, what they’re tuned into what they’re listening, you know, refreshments, so on and so forth. That wouldn’t have been possible unless someone actually thought about the use cases of having sensors in the stadium, you know, 10 years ago.

Dan Cunliffe
No, it’s good. I mean, I think the if I can, if I can bring it a little bit from my perspective, as well, and the bits that I’ve been seeing, so I was, I was asked to present at one of our sort of more telecoms focused events. And it’s a, it’s a fascinating market, a lot of guys build up really impressive businesses on recurring revenue structures, broadband, or Hosted Voice or sort of typical telecoms products. But one of the things I said to them is, look, look, they’ve all made the time to come and listen to what he had to say, and I asked them how many guys were business owners in in the room, and there was actually quite a few, it’s probably about 70 or 80% of them. And I particularly said to them, I said, one of the things you’ve got to remember is that by adopting an IoT strategy, and committing to IoT from either a connectivity perspective, or the end to end solution is actually worth three to five times more in terms of a valuation of that business, versus what you’re doing today in your traditional telecoms. And the reason for this is particularly around things like the tenure because these solutions last quite long, in terms of what they go for, and their and their importance, and the stickiness of the contracts as well, because we are at a stage where you kind of are either creating new things, or you’re developing something quite useful, people tend to want it to stay for a while. And it’s hard to unpick that end to end. But most importantly, I find and the thing I was trying to say to them is that like, Look, the number of devices needing to be connected every day is increasing, right from manufacturer level to existing stuff. And so your opportunity is just wider and wider and wider. And you know, private equity or private cash is keen to is keen to learn about that, and they would put higher valuations. So I kind of spoke them through that. And the amount of interest was super, super fascinating afterwards. And like explained to me how that looks and kind of how we can do this. And I find that, actually that as a as a slight change in mindset, you know, is to is to say to people look, this stuff isn’t just about, you know, believing the hype sometimes because we because we both created businesses, on the fact that we believe there’s something here and being successful on it, there’s actually reality, which is you can see the M&A market around IoT, you can see the amount of investment around IoT across the board, right, from connectivity to solutions, etc. being quite buoyant. And I just think sort of sharing that with people about why you do it is brings it down to sort of, you know, pounds and pence a little bit as well.

Tom White
Yeah, yeah. 100%. And I think it’s a great thing to talk about there. And I think, you know, what was interesting for me was to look at last year in 2020, with a lot of the private equity and VC companies not wanting to spend because of the pandemic and knowing where things going and then where that spend has come from this year. Not only has it gone through the roof, but a large portion of that money has gone into new tech, around IoT, machine learning. Artificial Intelligence. And really IoT is at the forefront of that, because you can’t really have machine learning or AI without loading lots of data and lots of data points and being able to do with that, and the collection of that data, if it’s in a real environment, or it’s from a device comes from an IoT based system. Right. So, and I think that’s one of the reasons why things are growing so quickly at the moment, but yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s something I’m really passionate about. And I think furthermore, it’s because generally speaking, nine times out of 10 and in fact, you know, it’s pretty unheard of, to think about any IoT device system, infrastructure that isn’t out there to actually enrich someone’s life better, right? So ultimately, it all boils down to someone having a better experience in their life, right? And industrial solutions, it’s often to get something out there quicker to the customer or something cheaper, faster, to pass on savings. Medtech, you know, some of the audible devices that are out there at the moment, hearable devices even, are incredible, right? And, and that’s a real feelgood factor because people talk about tech for good a lot and certainly in our industry. It’s a wash. It’s a wash with greenwash frankly. It’s cool to have a good CSR policy, but at it’s heart you know what’s it really about? What’s the tangibles? Like, what’s the reality? Yeah, and that’s why I’m so proud of Paratus. And what we do, because every company that we work with, and that we talk to, and they get to meet people like you, Dan, you know, you’re doing good stuff out there because ultimately it has a you know, it has a real real benefit we spoke when you came on our show about the ambulances, right, and some of the projects you were doing on there.

Dan Cunliffe
I mean, ironically, we all I say ironically, because we we’ve actually, through the pandemic done a few things, you know, like getting hospitals up and running within a day. Helping kids who are learning from home so that they can have, you know, protected internet, especially the more vulnerable ones. But then we actually won an award and I wonder if it was because people were listening to your podcast for a pandemic relief. For that, don’t worry. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, we we then we then we won this award for like services during the pandemic, which was totally random. But But you know, it’s really cool that people picked up because it wasn’t, it wasn’t that we weren’t told we were finalists Isn’t that good? So it was quite good. Yeah, I mean, well done. Doing doing doing the bits for good is, is a big part about, you know, why we get people who want to get into it, but also, a lot of our team find it fascinating and useful, you know, that they can in some way they they are supporting things because that’s that’s the enabler on the back of it. I mean, one thing I will I will mention is that I don’t think that people understood things that the UK suffered something like an estimated 5 billion pounds in loss because of the amount of outages suffered on the fixed lines during the time, you know, us having to work from home video, etc. and putting so much effort or at least so much, I suppose, strain on the fixed line environment that we were unable to do certain things we normally do and, you know, supporting the kids that we that we did, and a lot of the homework in using smart mobile technology actually just helps people get their work done, you know, simplicity like that and doing it the right way is actually quite cool. Look, I’m just conscious that we’ve said so many great things. And I want to make sure that we can get people to come over and listen to the intelligent people. I’ll put myself in that bracket that you’ve interviewed, I’m joking, that you’ve interviewed over the last couple of months, do you want to tell us about how people can access your services, or at least learn about you guys?

Tom White
Thank you so much for having me on, Dan. So you come to our podcast, which is the IoT podcast.com take a look at some of the interviews that we’ve had there to find out more about Paratus it’s just ParatusPeople.com type in Paratus People into Google I’m sure it’ll come up with lots of options but we really appreciate the time to talk about myself and the business. And it’s been great to come on the show Dan.

Dan Cunliffe
No you’re very welcome. And obviously any of our hundreds of partners who listen to us please do if you need some support in the IoT space, particularly around the strong talent give Tom and the team a call it’s worth it. Tom again, thanks so much and looking forward to speaking to you again soon. My name is Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea. Thank you very much to everyone for listening.