Is 2022 a good year to get started with IoT? | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 24

Dan Cunliffe
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning into the IoT Insider. My name is Dan Cunliffe. And I’m Managing Director of Pangea and today I am thrilled to be joined by my good friend and Sales Director, Bernie McPhillips. Hey, Bernie, how you doing?

Bernie McPhillips
Hey, Dan, nice to be introduced as your good friend as well as Sales Director, pleased to be part of this podcast with you feels like it’s been a while.

Dan Cunliffe
It has been a while since you and I’ve been on them, to be honest. Just trying to think of the last time I introduced you as, my good friend, maybe it’s just January. Let’s see how we get the next. turning over a new leaf. Yeah, the New Year spirit is among us. Exactly. Well, everyone a very happy new year, and welcome to 2022. We wish you all the best and a very prosperous year ahead. But today, we’re going to take a look at what’s in store for the IoT in 2022. And whether it’s a good year to get started with IoT. If you haven’t already, I think, you know, last year just compounded the IoT surge, particularly started with pandemic. And you know, a lot of different things came about where the whole market was probably turned a little bit upside down in terms of how you react, I would say that you’ve probably never seen as many movements in healthcare as we would have because of pandemic or ways in which we could track and measure things like temperatures of the vaccines and all these things that suddenly came up. And the healthcare market in particular was sort of well addressed around IoT. But I think from from our perspective, and you know, looking after our partners all around the UK, and obviously around the world, the business case for IoT is bigger than ever. And this year, we really think it’s gonna be interesting to allow almost almost any type of market to get involved. Bernie, from your perspective, IoT and pandemic, anything that sort of came to mind from your thoughts?

Bernie McPhillips
Lots Dan, yeah, I think you just nailed it, a good chunk of it, there are a lot of use cases, very relevant to the pandemic, one that you referenced, there was the safe transport of the vaccine, it needed to be stored continually under minus 70, from point of manufacture right through to, it being administered, to a patient that needed to be scientifically measured and proven. So that was a lot of sensors, in vehicle and out of vehicle refrigeration, monitoring, etc. People having to connect to their place of work, or systems or applications or things from anywhere, you know, big became a thing because travel was restricted. And we were all urged to work from home and minimise contact with others. So I think whilst a lot of use cases were born out of the pandemic, it’s now very easy to relate those two use cases outside of the pandemic. And I think now a real tipping point, like with most technologies, is when users stop asking themselves, why would I need that? Or why would they want that and start asking themselves, why wouldn’t I and 2021 really felt like that year, because the use cases that you can apply, were seen to be extremely efficient, commercially viable, very trustworthy, like things from the pandemic, and we were connecting Nightingale hospitals and COVID-19 testing stations, we were connecting schoolchildren who were digitally excluded, we were all over this right, you know, and indeed won an award for our response to the pandemic here in the UK. And so just being able to take those use cases, but apply it to pretty much any business vertical now, just gave us the real proof that IoT is, is most definitely the future if we ran back the clock many years. And in the first couple of years of Pangea’s existence even a lot of the feedback from our partners or prospective partners is like yeah, we get it that’s the future artificial intelligence, AI, driverless cars and all that stuff. I think it’s no longer a perception that it’s the future. It’s now. I don’t know, if you agree, is that what you felt over the years and months?

Dan Cunliffe
I was gonna add to that, I mean, particularly around how we are seeing more and more, I like to kind of call it the pool from partners where, you know, when we started this business almost seven years ago, now, it felt like there was a lot of pushing, you’re trying to get people to, to buy into it. And I think last year 2021 Even through pandemic and the adjustments to the ways in which different businesses had to operate. Quite a lot of the sectors actually started to pull this technology towards them, you know, saying I need you to help me connect this or measure this or be able to give me an audit trail because you know, what I’m on the hook for being able to show this thing is actually in the right place in terms of temperature or location, or kind of whatever it needs to be and our partners are always very well positioned for this because they have the relationships with these different customers. And these different sort of, you know, sectors, so they do definitely go hand in glove. Um, the other but I was going to say is that we are seeing not just the health sector, on the back of the pandemic, but the reason why IoT is you know, bigger than ever is you’ve got other specific areas which are starting to really light up, and maybe we sort of touch on a couple of them, you know, particularly, you can’t look further than electric vehicles right now, I think, you know, you’ve got some stats where you know, over 40% of the models here in the UK are available as electric. And it’s predicted to outsell diesel in this year. And I think you know, the UK law has put down a marker to say that by 2030, we should not be selling any diesel cars, or petrol cars, which means that everyone who’s going to be going for a new car has to be electric in some way, shape, or form. I personally don’t have an electric car yet, but I am seeing it everywhere. And it’s probably a very good reason to kind of get into it. What does that mean for IoT? Well, you need electric charging stations, you need to know if they are up and ready to be used, are they giving back to the grid are they is a surplus energy, all this sort of monitoring and understanding of that grid is going to be vital. You know, you may even think of it as a as a new network in the UK electric vehicles being seen as a new network. I know your team’s already managed to win a few deals in this market, you may want to share with the audience?

Bernie McPhillips
Absolutely right. Yeah, okay, with every electric vehicle that vehicle needs to be charged, but even connectivity within the vehicle, often these vehicles are smart themselves. In terms of the telemetry, the performance of the vehicle, pre emptive maintenance, that is running exactly as it should, being able to direct you to where your nearest and most efficient charging stations are. There’s all different types, you know, get these kinds of superchargers. And that type of thing relevant to certain types of cars, which can charge in a fraction of the time. The connectivity is not just in the charging stations, but also in the vehicle themselves. And we’re really proud to have been chosen to partner with quite a number of the leading electric vehicle charging stations in the UK and beyond and indeed around Europe and even further afield and other continents like the Caribbean. We were able to provide intelligent mobile data for the services; Multi-network for resilience and ease of deployment, you can often be rolling this out over vast and complex geographies, where network coverage can vary to provide a single SIM, Multi-network allows the device to connect based on signal strength and pooling of data. Or, obviously, through our management portal, able to monitor everything in real time set alerts and usage notifications. So there’s nothing unexpected that can happen, so it’s instances, like this, and they were spoken about for many years, not all SIMs are equal, just rolling out a mobile broadband SIM in this instance, just wouldn’t cut it, it needs something more than that. And we’re able to deliver that with whatever IP address you need as well. Because often, you can need to remotely dial into these assets to make sure that everything’s working exactly as it should be to an incredible market. Not sure I’m ready to let go my combustion engine just yet, but I’ll be joining the electric party soon.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah I think it’s going to become well you can see by you know, the fact that they want to almost exclusively have electric or a form of electric vehicle on the road by 2030. I think that means we kind of all are going to be in that road anyway. But the point is that, you know, what is the business case for our partners as a start of a year why you should be considering the things that Pangea do and how we can help you right? So we spoke earlier about the pandemic and sort of healthcare, but there are way more opportunities around connected healthcare, wearables, etc. You know, Deloitte predicted something like 330 million wearables will be shipped worldwide this year. And the point is, we’re trying to give you guys who are listening opportunity to just think what, wow, that’s actually a big market, if I can be a 1%, or a half a percent in a big market that’s worth doing, right. That’s how you kind of set your ideas around business case and deciding what you want to do. A lot of these wearables really are coming up, because it’s all about trying to do predictive maintenance on the body, right on the human body. So how do I understand, you know, oxygen, blood oxygen levels, or probably stroke risks or even COVID symptoms? What can I do to kind of pick that up ahead of time, and we talk a lot about these smart patches, you know, which, I wouldn’t profess to say how you plug them onto yourself, but it’s hopefully not too invasive. But, you know, to be able to provide even deeper levels of data that can help you to even administer medicine. It’s not a pipe dream anymore. This isn’t like, you know, Terminator 2022. This is real stuff. And ironically, I was actually on the phone this morning to one of our sales guys, Terence, his wife, Amanda was getting some sort of smart device just put slightly under her skin which was connected to help her with her own medical conditions. So the stuff is real, right? And it needs to be connected. So there’s no reason why that’s not your business case.

Bernie McPhillips
Like the other things that we’ve discussed already they, the need for them. The proliferation of these devices, increased massively during the pandemic because all of a sudden, the NHS and other medical practices, one of their biggest priorities became keeping people away from the hospital, or the clinics or GP surgeries. Because obviously, as a country, we were looking to avoid people congregating anywhere, let alone somewhere where there’s lots of unwell people. So yeah, certainly being able to monitor patients vital statistics from a distance and gather that data remotely, and then contact the patient to discuss those results over video without even the need to, to see that patient in person. And we’ve obviously also been a big part of the project to roll out connectivity to GP surgeries across a vast geography in the UK, because doctors had to switch to video technology, a lot of the time to perform the consultations but a lot of GP surgeries are in remote locations, towns and villages, as opposed to major cities. And the UK network infrastructure wasn’t maybe set up to connect those places where you need high bandwidth connectivity, because it could be 2/3/4 GPs in a surgery all trying to conduct video surgery at the same time, they’ve probably been able to get away with ADSL, up until then running a few computers on the receptionist desk and that type of thing, but all of a sudden, high data required, there wasn’t the time, the logistics or the you know, the budget to roll out fibre to all of these places. So we were able to light them up overnight, right and get them connected with high speed secure connectivity that they needed with the right IP addressing. So again, just a real privilege to be part of helping the UK through the pandemic.

Dan Cunliffe
And I think that’s, you know, you’re kind of touching onto something. While it’s, it’s always important to understand, you know, the volumes, in a business case where the market is trending, that’s what we’re trying to share today really is just kind of a little bit of a reminder of where some of the some of the big hits are coming. But you said their security and you know, there’s nothing that needs to be more secure than anything related to probably your vehicle, maybe even you know, yourself as well, you know, on yourself, wearables, etc. How, are we tackling this as an industry, you know, IoT security is going to play an even bigger role. And last year, we talked about it. Stepping up the plate, and especially considering that there were over 1.5 billion very easily preventable attacks on devices in 2021. But for those of you who have seen this or not kind of picked up on it yet, actually, the UK government released a new set of guidelines that’s going to protect IoT products. And I can only really describe it as that, you know, for those of you who have maybe more technical roles, and you buy a new device, generally, that device has got a pretty obvious default password, it’s usually something like admin, for the username and maybe like admin for the password or something pretty trivial. What the government has said that, you know, we’re going to ban default passwords, and that the manufacturers must actually take a much more stronger onus on the fact that their product needs to come out with a little bit more security on it, particularly from a default password perspective. And I think this is a great thing, because, you know, wearables being shipped, bought at, you know, the equivalent of like a UK, Walmart or something like that, cannot just have a default password on it. These things need to be addressed. And I think we’re, I think we’re right up for that as an intelligent, mobile data provider as a global IoT connectivity partner, for a lot of these international players taking more responsibility right at the beginning just makes for a much more solid foundation. I think that’s the right way to look at it from a security perspective. I don’t know if you, if you kind of think that maybe the way that the security is moving forward. I mean, that’s probably one step hey Bernie, I mean, there may be other things that we can start to consider, particularly from our perspective around controlling IP a bit better, or maybe figuring out how we can help customers.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, certainly, I think the new guidelines help massively. I think, you know, kudos to the UK Government for getting something right. In this particular instance, putting the responsibility back on the manufacturers, greater security roadmaps around IoT products, because I think one of the key objections maybe around the adoption of IoT has been security, and you consider some of the information that may be flowing backwards and forwards, around CCTV or location, or as we’ve just been discussing in, you know, healthcare solutions, private patient medical data and that type of thing. Security is absolutely paramount. If we’re going to live in this connected world, where everything is connected and information has been shared freely between these devices to allow automation and efficiencies and economic and environmental impacts. The security of that data is vital. I think up until this point, security’s kind of sat right in the middle of IoT, but it’s not really been particularly clear whose responsibility it was. And I think that that visibility of whose responsibility is it definitely clear now, right? It’s important that it’s all on the manufacturer, if we can provide really secure private connectivity. I don’t think there’s any instance in the world of a mobile network being hacked in terms of information being taken directly off a mobile network, vulnerability tends to be the edge, at device. So the significance of security and the roadmap for these products being pushed out to the manufacturer of these devices is a really key turning point.

Dan Cunliffe
But again, like back to your point earlier, about not all connectivity is the same, you know, not all connectivity is equal, I think, making edge devices, or at least, mandating edge devices to be a little bit more secure, particularly around the username and password scenario, as was just put up by the guidelines. But then working with someone like a Pangea who then also gives you that security on the network side, you’re kind of piecing all these things together, that means when you have a conversation with a customer, you can feel immensely empowered to say, look, this can be as secure as you need it to be, because we can do both the network side and the device side, at a level of security. And these things are important, right, because guys want to know.

Bernie McPhillips
When you look at the number of devices that there’s gonna be, that’s why it’s important, right? Then what analysts you kind of subscribe to, Cisco said last year 27.1 billion, that’s three and a half connected devices per person on the planet. It’s seven point something, 7.7 billion people on the planet, so kind of three and a half. I think there’s other analysts talking about you’re 29 to 30 billion this year. So that’s taken that off to four or just around four connected devices per person. So yeah, I think, you know, it’s wonderful to say, because, again, you talked about the push into the market, and how we used to talk to adopters, you know, a few years ago, these stats seemed so far off, you know, there’s going to be this many billion devices connected by this year. It’s here, it’s now it’s already three and a half to four connected devices, per person. I know I’m certainly above that average, I think, if I think of what’s connected in the house right now and that type of stuff, but yeah, yeah, it’s just awesome that, you know, we’ve, we’ve been speaking about this stuff for seven years or more, and now to be in it, and it’s all around us. And it’s the here and now and not, you know, some kind of futuristic thing that we’re all meant to believe is going to happen. It’s right here. So yes, it’s really awesome.

Dan Cunliffe
And if we sort of bring it back, just sort of round up, you know, the whole point of today’s podcast is really to talk about why the business case for your company or for you to get into IoT intelligent mobile data, working with Pangea, hopefully to kind of go in that direction is because we’re describing specifics in a market where it is around either it’s IoT healthcare or its electric vehicles, there is a need for security, all these things actually drive the fact that there are more and more accurate predictions on how many devices will be connected to the internet, right? That’s what’s happened. So to me, when you look at a business case, if you can be a part of a growing sector or a growing market, and you can take your slice of that growing market, that’s a that’s a good business case. We also know from personal experience, and the partners that we have that it is a lucrative market as well, you know, back in the day, it was much more focused on probably lower value, I suppose revenue per unit, whereas today, it definitely has an increase, you know, there is a far higher dependency on the services that we put into our piping channel than ever before. And so therefore, the revenue requirement and the sort of layers that you add onto it, makes it more sticky, more kind of revenue rich, and also just becomes more critical to that deployment. So in terms of the kind of conversation around, you know, is the business case, there for getting into IoT, even maybe thinking about doing it for the first time? I mean, I would obviously say this, but 100% I think it is true, because of the market being much larger than ever before, more devices being connected than ever before. And we can’t see it stopping can we? We don’t see, oh, suddenly, there’s going to be less devices than next year. Well, then last year to this year, I mean, from a sales perspective year, we’re closer to it, I think, than I am, but we definitely every day are getting requests on how can we connect these things?

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it regardless of which analysts you subscribe to now, everybody’s saying that mobile data connectivity is now by far the biggest element of the telecoms industry as a whole. Mobile Data has grown by close to 30% year on year, the last two years or so. And this is before we’ve even got full blown 5G in the UK or much further beyond as well, which just opens up a whole new world. You can have connectivity at your fingertips, not bound by wires that’s going to need to stand toe to toe with the top end of fixed connectivity products, will be entirely more flexible, Multi-network’s not dependent on one operators infrastructure is it, and you can move about because a lot of the things that we’re looking to connect within the Internet of Things are not things you can run wires too, when it vehicles or ferries going up and down the Thames. Or things that don’t need to be connected for very long; hospitality, pop up retail, temporary sites, porta cabins, construction, that type of thing. It’s giving customers exactly what they need, where they need it, for as long as they need it, and then just be able to pack it all up, move it on and just plug it in again at the new location, things that you just simply can’t do with a with any form of fibre or copper cable infrastructure. So, yeah, as you said, it’s easy for us to say, but the time is now to get involved with setting up. We’ve probably said this every January, right? So this is the year. But I think, yeah, I’m pretty much guaranteed will be sat here saying the same thing again next year, because there’ll be new use cases, new devices, increased use of that technology, we’ve got providers who will provide things like payment terminals in vehicles, private hire, etc, for taxis, but then they’re already talking to us saying, well, actually, their device going forward will now incorporate two cameras, a dash cam, and an inward facing for the driver’s security and CCTV, as well as a device in the rear of the car for passenger Wi-Fi. So the you know, there’s a single use device, which all of a sudden, the data that that device is going to consume will quadruple at least, because they just bolt in new and new things on to it.

Dan Cunliffe
And you’re hitting markets, like obviously, insurance, predictive maintenance, there’s going to be you know, probably some kind of drivers you or pay as you drive models, which we know are already in some of the big insurance companies. So yeah, I mean, the list is kind of endless. And what’s nice is we, you know, we we’ve spoken about markets growing, we’ve spoken about levels, like layers of and I don’t quite want to say complexity, but layers that make it special what you do in this market, because it’s not like you can just get it everywhere, which is great. I think that’s good, you kind of differentiate yourself. And then we talk about, you know, sort of more and more use cases as the as the piece goes forward. And that, to me has got business cash written all over it. And I think for our partners, you know, whether you are a Telecoms Reseller, you’re an ISP, perhaps maybe you’re a Managed Service Provider, or you have your own solution that you just need to look at how you connect it. The requirements from a growing market is 100% there, and you kind of want to probably bring it to a bit of a close there. And not overstate it. I think our position is to ensure that we always bring the best for our partners, whether it be multiple countries solutions, whether it be improved security, or whether just be some advice on how we get your stuff off the ground. That’s what we do better than anyone, I think, you know, we really put ourselves forward in terms of executing and helping the partners connect the right thing the first time, rather than getting it wrong, and having to readjust and change it out. You know, we’re not just here to get a quick fix out of making sure you connect really quickly. It’s not about that for us, we really take time to make sure you can make the right thing at the right time. And so with that, you know, I do want to thank Bernie because his time is precious. He’s always out there. But thank you for so much for your insights, buddy. And, you know, I think maybe you want to close off by just saying one or two things that maybe our partners should consider as well.

Bernie McPhillips
Thanks, Dan. It’s been a real pleasure to be on the podcast again. Thanks for having me. I think my closing points are to talk about something that I think I’ve said again, every year since I’ve been at Pangea, the three pillars to success and what our partners consider when looking at opportunities. Hopefully, we’ve been able to answer all of them inadvertently today. The first one is, is the opportunity real? I think inadvertently, with 29 to 30 billion devices connected close to four per person in the country, no one could argue the opportunities not real. Can I win? You can, and in partnership with Pangea, because we’ve spent seven years investing in our own infrastructure, our people our capability. So we have everything that you need in one place. And then lastly, can you make money? As you alluded to, you know, we bust the myth a long time ago, that IoT is something that is very low revenue per user. And therefore you need to do massive volume to make it worth your while, that is absolutely no longer the case as well. So if you’re interested in getting involved in a very real market opportunity, where you can win, and you can make money, then the time is now. The great news is it’s not a saturated market, you’ve not missed the boat. But yeah, there’s no better time than now, so we look forward to hearing from people and our partners and potential partners reaching out and the conversations that will flow from that. So yeah, thank you for having me, Dan, I’ll leave it to you to close.

Dan Cunliffe
You’re very good. Yeah, those three pillars are always, always something Bernie talks to us about, about how we can help our partners. But for everyone who joined us, thanks so much for listening, you know, we do appreciate it. If you want to know more, please do head over to our website, there’s particularly more on the IoT Insider podcast, but of course, our blog content, and huge amounts of interesting advice, case studies, things you can use, you know, when you’re talking to a customer that might spark a bit of interest for some real life examples. And if you want any helping hand getting started with a project, or looking at how you’re going to actually connect the device to the Internet, what sort of sort of specifics you need, give us a call for some free pointers, very happy to be available and sort of give that advice, and particularly share some of the experiences that we’ve had all the way through. Again, thanks to Bernie McPhillips who is our Sales Director, and I’m Dan Cunliffe Managing Director of Pangea. Thanks so much for listening.