As the IoT industry continues to accelerate, deployment volumes are growing rapidly bringing greater complexity and putting previously minor challenges under the magnifying glass. George Malim, the managing editor of IoT Now, interviews David Traynor, head of Operations at Velos, to understand how IoT organisations can mitigate their growing pains while achieving greater simplification and improved control of their operations. Velos is a carrierindependent IoT connectivity provider and is the new name for JT IoT, the IoT division of Jersey Telecom that was acquired by Perwyn in 2021.
Traynor runs operations for Velos and is driving the business transformation to accelerate growth while holding responsibility for risk management and overall compliance. In addition, he participates in industry initiatives focused on securing IoT and the furthering of embedded universal integrated circuit cards (eUICC). Traynor’s experience is in product management and operations at a range of internet, mobile and communications software firms. Prior to his current role, he has held positions at ASPIDER (now Kore), Fairmarket (now eBay)FTP and Firefox (now NetManage).
George Malim: Let’s start by asking about the recent name change from JT to Velos. Why have you introduced the new brand?
David Traynor: In the past year we have revolutionised our business: firstly we acquired new owners to give us the independence and control we need; secondly we have evolved from being a mobile network operator (MNO) as part of JT to being a multi-carrier mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) so we can commit 100% of our attention to our IoT business; thirdly we have acquired new businesses to broaden our offerings and drive innovation. This transformation of our business demanded the transformation of our brand – it signals that we are not the same animal we were a year ago. Hence Velos and the derivation of the word Velos which helps reinforce principles around speed and precision.
GM: Please can you share a little more on the numbers?
Velos
DT: We have been delivering IoT solutions to our customers for about ten years and have built the growth to above average levels. And we are very pleased to have new owners, last year we were bought in a deal that valued JT IoT at more than £200 million by Perwyn, a European private equity investor specialist. Its focus on excellence and ambition really helps us drive our innovation and agility, it is a great fit.
GM: IoT has now matured to the extent that projects are now mass scale and this brings substantial challenges from pricing, the bill of materials, integration and packaging. How can Velos help customers plan for scalability and address these challenges?
DT: Scalability touches many dimensions of manufacture, from the logistics to provisioning to the onboarding, and each presents gains for IoT service providers. However, scale also magnifies error and inefficiencies. A few cents of additional cost or complexity multiplied several times and then by the number of devices in a deployment can make some projects unviable or put a substantial dent in profitability.
When it comes to packaging, customers need higher levels of integration to simplify device configuration and to help reduce costs. This includes SIM form factors like the MFF SIM that are smaller and can be soldered into devices… and also integrated SIM (iSIM), which has the SIM functionality fully integrated into the system-on-a-chip or SOC. This enables fewer components to be specified but also aids operational efficiency. This improved efficiency in onboarding is providing reliable ways to deploy devices and can also help speed deployment and reduce hassle for consumers. For enterprise applications this can ensure that devices can be adopted into private corporate networks with automatic provisioning that allows different modes for different stages of the lifecycle.
In addition, there are functional benefits that can be realised if optimum components are selected. In the modems and SIMs, for example, benefits can include reduced power consumption and a reduction in the amount of real-estate taken up in the device because of the optimised form factor of these components.
GM: How important is managing overall cost so manufacturers can manage scale and deliver flexibility to can generate the most value through the complete product lifecycle?
DT: Reducing costs is always a goal and we always look to having the components, tools and systems that can deliver the economies of scale that our customers need. This can be as simple as bulk activations, or providing warehousing facilities in the country of manufacture.
New functions and features can also help to extend product life and improve cost of manufacture. A good example is the use of the remote SIM provisioning (RSP) that allows the SIM to be swapped electronically over the air after manufacture, removing the need to change SIMs for improved rates, quality or coverage.
This remote SIM provisioning, often referred to as eSIM, helps provide single global stock-keeping unit (SKUs) for OEMs because the SIM can bootstrap its own connection at the point of deployment. The benefit here is that local plastic SIM cards do not have to be installed in the country they are deployed and regional or national variants of products do not need to be created.
This ongoing capability provides flexibility to ensure the device is connected to the best provider in its location and helps future-proof the service in case of outages or technology changes. Knowing that the lifespan of a device can be extended without human interaction for several years has obvious benefits to the total cost of the service and therefore knock-on implications for profitability and viability.
GM: As connected device numbers proliferate and IoT populates the mainstream, the threat surface has radically expanded and security now presents a potential bottleneck for many organisations’ IoT deployments. How is Velos positioned to help customers build trust in the apps, devices and data their IoT solutions generate?
DT: Security is an essential ingredient of successful IoT deployments and increased scale only increases the scope of the challenge. Managing the risks from the ever-expanding vulnerabilities for IoT is a major concern for all manufacturers. We provide management of the access point names (APNs), IP addresses, ports and firewalls to reduce these surfaces and we protect data transiting the internet with virtual private networks (VPNs) and authentications to help reduce attack risks and detect attempts.
Security is not just about managing threats, it’s also about providing methods to help authenticate the devices, applications and data. As more and more IoT applications handle personal data for wearables, or for vehicle control, or for asset tracking, there is an increasing demand to be able to prove the authenticity of the data and the device to comply with policies to protect citizens, and the country legislation. For example, signing functions can be easily deployed to help deliver auditable methods to prove that we can trust that image has not been tampered with, and that it originated on that camera, on that date, in that location.
Just as we saw in the world of the web browser, we are now seeing increasing demand for complete transport layer security (TLS) stacks and initiatives like IoT SAFE from GSMA to further improve the trust that can be delivered to these IoT applications. This is a big topic since getting adequate security takes expertise and resource that has traditionally been missing in the IoT space. As an industry we need more manufacturers to use the standards-based tools that we have in our products that deliver cross authentication or secure channels using industry recognised Java and Global Platform approaches.
GM: How does Velos deliver capabilities that improve value and extend your capability beyond connectivity?
DT: All our offerings are delivered via application programme interfaces (APIs) and web tools, and they provide the location, security, billing and usage analysis that manufacturers and enterprises need to better manage their applications. More and more, our customers need better integration into the control plane so they can measure and manage the way that devices and applications behave. Advantages can be uncovered across the board and range from improving signalling efficiencies to reducing battery drain (or even improving carbon footprints). In addition, we can help them protect the content to comply with emerging applications that require compliance to GDPR, HIPPA, or Patriot Act regulations.
GM: Mature IoT deployments are high volume, cover multiple countries and have coverage requirements that rely on reliable, secure connectivity. What are the challenges of providing these capabilities at the same time as enabling flexibility so IoT organisations can control and manage their deployed estate of devices and software?
DT: Coverage is the essential capability that IoT demands and we supply. The value of interconnected things is that they can deliver derivative value to many applications – so the connectivity must meet the needs of the thing. The value is more about QoS and policy – not just simple megabytes. The beauty is that we also provide the flexibility for that connectivity to be changed on the fly like the RSP topic we covered earlier.
GM: What tools and management systems are needed to integrate connectivity, devices and applications and apply intelligence to better understand overall behaviour?
DT: When it comes to network integration there are only a few IoT MVNEs that fully understand the complexity of the overall integration needed to deliver this vision of flexible connectivity. Some are just mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that focus on selling only their native connectivity, while others have simple roaming agreements but do not have the flexibility of full integration to multiple core networks, and some simply rely on the billing aspect of an online charging service.
Increasingly now, our customers demand access to all of these services with the latest diameter, message queuing and interop facilities needed. Our customers include many of the IoT MVNEs in the market, they use our international mobile subscriber identities (IMSIs) to give them the coverage they need, and the APIs for the control they need, and access to the user plane and control plane to improve their offerings. This provides both the independence they need and the integration they need to deploy global solutions.
GM: How does Velos help automate controls to allow the agility that organisations want in a way that can be independent of the carrier, country or technology they deploy?
DT: There is no one-size-fits-all approach in IoT and simple zones just do not cut it. Almost all of our 1,000 manufacturers have their own coverage schemes and many have variants to meet specific use cases and product needs on a region-by-region basis, by regulator environments or by carrier. We provide simplicity and control across these differing needs and support customers to achieve compliance for devices, roaming, data sovereignty and tax. It’s certainly no longer just about carrier-neutral connectivity.
GM: What is your view of the current status of IoT? Do you think we have reached or even passed the tipping point at which massive volumes of devices are making the initial IoT vision a reality?
DT: There are still a number of hurdles that we face as an industry and for me, the three most important are scalability, security and simplicity. Forgive the trite alliteration here but it does help us all remember our objectives are to help stimulate this business for all of us.
To achieve simplicity the IoT service and device has to be easy to integrate, easy to manufacture, easy to deploy, easy to maintain. I think our industry knows this and most players understand this well.
When it comes to scale, getting the first 100,000 devices deployed is fairly easy but the ceiling of one million, or ten million cannot just be solved without reliable processes and integration. Building for scale takes experience and many of the players haven’t solved the reality of chip shortages, carrier certification, electricity price hikes, or avoiding the massive impacts of failures from the third-party IPX, colocation, cloud or IP transit providers. Many are starting to understand reliability and what it takes to deliver a world-class service.
In my opinion it is security where IoT, as an industry, is most vulnerable. I believe that we as suppliers have to become the catalyst to push these technologies and tools to our customers. We have the functionality inside our platforms and SIMs to help our industry make huge strides in security, but very few customers are actually using what is available. We have to educate and apply industry standard approaches – from Global Platform libraries and the baseline Java functions that are in all our SIMs, to the certificate authority functions that are commonplace for the billions of web browsers on our planet, but sadly, in very few of the billions of IoT devices. We have to stimulate change here, we have the tools and the knowhow, we have to find the right commercial approaches to build IoT applications that we can rely on and that comply to our legislation. These must be solutions that are simple to deploy, that can scale and that we can trust.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow
