you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcasts the number one publication and resource for the internet of things if you are watching this on youtube please like at this video and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already done so if you're listening to this on a podcast directory we would truly appreciate it if you would subscribe so you get the latest episodes as soon as they are out all right my name is ryan chacon i'll be your host and on today's episode we have thomas gear the senior business development of 5g edge iot at vernessa they are an organization that is continually striving to drive innovation with a comprehensive portfolio of microcontrollers analog empowered devices on this episode we talk a lot about the combination of private and lte 5g das network integration with smart buildings and kind of how that fits into the iot space leading use cases for smart buildings the roi goals that smart building and property managers and owners have different other connectivity um kind of connectivity options in the space as well as challenges that they see from their point of view all in all fantastic episode i think you get a lot of value out of it but before we get into it any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome thomas the iit for all podcast thanks for being here this week thanks for having me it's great to be here looking forward to it absolutely me as well um let's start off by having you do a quick introduction about yourself to our audience yes thomas gear i work for nissa i joined them last year at a very large semiconductor company and you know well known in automotive and iot and i've joined after a career as an entrepreneur and entrepreneur as well looking into 5g and also retail iot and other emerging technologies the last few years and i'm bringing the um the combination of you know 5g private networking working with tier 1 telcos as well as small building iot which is you know what we're going to discuss today absolutely yeah um so tell me a little bit more about the company's role in the iot space sure so actually my team comes from a company called call echelon so that has been acquired multiple times uh in the last few years and uh the car of the team is still there and they invented the uh lone work cylon protocol around you know 30 years ago and um and then it has been pretty successful they got lots of traction in smart cities so a lot of city lights for example are equipped with you know the echelon you know solution and uh still today and they've evolved uh the product into a you know hardware and software stack uh where you know they are serving basically mostly now the smart building market uh you know to bridge by basically uh older protocols and uh and newer ones and uh and basically translate data streams into digital twin that can basically be used by building management systems and also analytics and you know smart basically intelligence platforms fantastic so yeah i wanted to i know you mentioned a second ago what we kind of plan to talk about here on the smart building space but tell us just from your perspective what the landscape kind of looks like and feels like for you in the smart building space as it relates to things that are going on with iot yeah so yeah i can see the the very large uh traditional players uh from one side they obviously have you know a top to bottom you know solution and they've been around a lot uh you know they most of them have their hardware or the oem the hardware you know from from a few suppliers and obviously they try to you know to to get market traction around offering a whole solution end to end and uh and then i can see the disruptors to that so intelligence prop tech company so iot proptech where you'll have data intelligence with dashboards some of them just doing reporting and analysis all those doing more more offering automation as well and and then there are companies uh you know they are just doing gateway controllers basically the hardware that is going to bridge you know those uh you know in software solutions including building management systems uh you know our building automation systems different terminologies according to to where you're based in the world and um and those can be you know fragmented and um and the gateway controllers most of the time are just a piece of hardware and there's nothing on them really apart from you know the the drivers themselves uh you know to basically uh have a system to to connect and reach you know all the protocols that might be already in place in a building if it's a retrofit project for example if you're going to redo and upgrade you know a building that has a simple you know control manual control system into an automated and smart uh you know optimize energy one and uh there is a gap basically in the market uh that's how i can see so i've been i can see a lot of this disruption i'm actually looking into prospective partnerships myself so i've it's part of my work is to look at the landscape in terms of you know the ai software as a service the facilities managers they're also expanding their offering so from purely you know offering management service they're also going into energy optimization and analytics and there's dashboards and that can serve them well as well because obviously they can have internally they can they can get savings but they can also offer another business so there's a lot of um of different players now in the industry and i think it's it's a very interesting time uh because even you know startups of 10 to 15 people are getting really big contracts so i i can see a lot of acquisitions as well and you probably know more than i do because obviously you're releasing a lot of news you know regularly and and some of the big guys you know are obviously acquiring you know interesting startups uh plus uh telcos as well are going into iot and that's another topic as well where you know more than a set tracking they're looking at you know expanding their services offering so that's uh that's an interesting one as well to look into and what from from what you've seen happening in the market are there any use cases in the smart building kind of environment that are really leading the way yeah um i think at the moment uh it's more you know coming from the the needs so you have energy costs that are going you know higher and higher so you want to save energy bills so obviously if you optimize your building with smart building management systems and you have the right you know devices and interfaces in place and you can achieve that then you have well-being so from a health perspective for occupants not only because of covet but that's one reason obviously you want to have the right uh you know sensors to monitor air quality but you also want people to be you know to have a pleasant office and have a nice place to to visit if it's a public venue so um so those are very important um you know metrics uh from building owners and facilities management now and they're investing heavily in retrofits to be able to to achieve that and and when you when you work with a company uh kind of on these types of projects or you're exposed to these types of projects what are the roi goals that these companies and these building owners property owners are looking for when they're getting involved in iot i know it obviously depends on per use case but is there kind of at a high level is there common roi that maybe is more specific to this industry as opposed to just kind of the broader sense of oh they're always trying to save costs to become more efficient yeah i think at the moment as well you want to optimize the space on the top of the energy monitoring and optimization um you know also you know occupant well-being you you want to optimize your space so if you're a landlord or an fm that is managing a building and and looking after the you know the tenants uh you want to make sure that you know all the floor space is occupied and uh and the optimized so you can get a higher yield uh you know so um that's that's also from the an economics point of view um if you're building or retrofitting and selling off a building you're increasing the value by having a smart building system as well so that's also another uh type of you know economics that's very important and uh and obviously you want a future proof uh building as well that's that's more long-term uh you know value so you have systems in place you know that are opened and able to uh to be upgraded right you know to you know not only for smart buildings but connectivity as well so that's you know you're offering you know cellular connectivity you can have private networking uh you can have basically um import other important you know basically services for you know public venues and and also you know corporate real estate and when you mention connectivity here for a second um can you talk about and this is a discussion i've had with others in the past not necessarily as it relates to the smart building space but just generally about private lte 5g kind of networks how is that playing a role um in the smart building landscape and just the enablement of solutions is that becoming more popular as you're getting kind of into like private versus the public networks what is being utilized more and kind of how's that fitting in yeah i mean it's an interesting one because you know for the last uh five six years um you know traditionally uh 5g it's been in terms of private networking it's been looking at industry or 5g so manufacturing you know parts and and actually when you dig into those um they don't really have a need for 5g as a core technology and it is as a complementary one for specific use cases so if it's a very big industrial campus they might benefit from having you know 5g basically because all their assets you know are moving in a very large area and and in the past as well um they would benefit from private lte for example when they had interference so if if the warehouse had a lot of metal infrastructure and um and you know obviously you know that has a there's an advantage versus the old versions of wi-fi but now wi-fi is evolving wi-fi 6e and wi-fi 7 coming and uh and basically they're addressing all those problems including the density of devices that are connected at the same time because that's one of the big thing that 5g you know is bringing and bandwidth as well so uh it's addressing those problems plus interference as well by having different uh basically bandwidths um you know and different bands on the back on the spectrum as well so um so those are well traditionally uh where 5g was being looked at and it's still you know uh there's still a lot of working groups around that right but you can already see in the media that people are asking why there's not more traction on this and um and basically yeah because i think hybrid networking is the end is the answer for that and but uh to answer your your question in smart buildings um traditionally as well uh you'll have the um private network system integrators and uh distributed antenna systems so basically the ability to expand a public cellular network so basically if you are in a more underground you wouldn't have uh you know external areas that would reach your mobile so you might be uh you know out of coverage and the distributing the system so the dust is bringing you coverage and to do that uh it's quite expensive um you know because there's a lot of uh radio survey that needs to be done so that you know all the important locations are covered uh the equipment is expensive and um you know that's traditionally that's been a barrier and only you know the biggest stadiums and big malls have been able to to do that are very remote areas and uh that's changing um that's being disrupted by new players and also some some telco vendors also been you know doing a lot of innovation on this with virtualized solutions where you're able to put a lot of the stack of the network uh in the cloud and on servers if it needs to be on premise but in a fully virtualized way so you're able to use you know existing uh you know white um you know white box basically hardware and uh what it means is that you're able to slice the network so you'll have a private network you'll have a public one and you connect to the back hole of the the telcos so that you know providing uh you know the services to to the end user like you will be and um and you're basically simplifying the whole equation so that means that the costs you know to to install are reducing dramatically and and you can just use the existing uh backbone of a network in a building and that means that this same backbone you can also share with it all the iot uh framework that you are using uh to connect to for example you know hedge back if you're using ethernet and power over ethernet right your ethernet network can be in the in the background and then you use smart gateways to basically um you know exchange data and connect different protocols so if you have lora and then you might have you know wi-fi and you have the ethernet in the background and those can enable to have basically this hybrid network that what i means is that instead of having a system integrator for smart buildings and another uh for private networks those can either work together or not a similar the same system integrator can deploy you know a private network or distribute an antenna system so public network expansion and a small building at the same time and the advantage here as well is that by doing this because it's our buildings um as as we know and we can talk about it here you can achieve you know in average 30 percent energy cost reduction and maintenance as well cost reduction by having predictive maintenance you can bring those savings to your investment costs when you are investing in a private network or in a distributed antenna system and you're doing a smart building uh upgrade at the same time you can bring those energy savings you know to reduce your capex and your opex so your your investment in capital to have those upgrades done and you're operating as well costs so your total cost of ownership is going to be diminished uh drastically and as a result that can really open you know the door and make uh those two uh or three technologies you know accessible to more building owners you know it doesn't have to be you know the biggest shopping malls and the biggest airports and the biggest you know crs it's it's actually uh reachable to people that just uh want you know their visitors to basically have uh continuous you know 4g and 5g coverage when they come to their offices right and at the same time they can privatize their network uh you know having a hybrid uh wi-fi cellular you know connectivity and at the same time they have smart buildings so all this all in one because basically technologies have been simplified so it's much more accessible and the learning curve as well for system integrators is is much simpler much faster you know because the software defined networking involved and this is making it much easier plus you have subscription you know models as well even for public and private 5g connectivity now so that's also changing the game gotcha fantastic yeah one other thing i wanted to ask you is when you know we've talked a lot about different kind of areas as it connects to the smart building space but what are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing lead the way from an adoption standpoint in this industry are there things that are still difficult for companies to kind of get over the over the hump to adopt and if so what are they and um what advice do you have for companies to kind of work through them yeah i mean some people might think that they're stuck with a system yes that's that's one scenario and that we can see quite often so they're stuck with one system and they think that too they they cannot come out of it basically and the system cannot talk you know to open platforms and uh and really uh you know they they and then the costs for if they keep that system to also add you know as a total energy optimization service might be prohibitive so they think you know oh i'm gonna have to rip uh everything out if i want to to basically have a more modular approach and you know have those new guys you know bringing me the smart building solution and um that's that's a misconception uh their solutions today uh you know that can actually uh interface um you know older systems um you know from the big guys to newer ones so uh you know that's something that we do for example with the smart server and uh and it's important because otherwise you just get stuck you know in one system until you know you're forced to upgrade for example at the last minute if you have you know esg targets for your building so i know here in the uk by 2030 people have to at least have a b achieve achiever b on the epc scale which is you know basically they need to be extremely sustainable and then as we know the 2050 which is longer term there's it just needs to be uh you know it needs to have the best you smart building systems in place at all times um so that they are basically they have net zero emission and um so that's that's been one one problem second is also obviously the miss the preconception about costs so um same thing uh applies for you know uh private network distributed network system as with smart buildings people think is too prohibitive it's expensive to do it but actually they're already suppliers that provide self-install you know kits or you know for us for example the smart server we have a library of 300 you know devices built in so it can be either you know put in an existing you know antiquated legacy and building up the automation system uh by an integrator add sensors and already you'll have you know a first phase of a smart building system in place at very low cost because you won't have to completely replace everything so that's an example fantastic and for companies out there looking to kind of get go down this route and potentially adopt some of these use cases and things that we're talking about now what's the best way you think they can go about doing that yeah i think they should they should basically reach out you know to to system system integrators that are specialized you know in and iot consultants as well that specialized in energy optimization and um and and find out you know get a survey and get some you know some some data of you know what he could bring them in terms of you know energy optimization can they upgrade as well some of their you know a great connection because now you have smart grids that are coming as well where you can have some local energy you know production on the system where you can actually sell that off and that can further reduce you know your energy costs as well and you can even you know just you cannot you can you can actually make money from it so that's that's the next big thing and um and at the same time um just inquire look at the press like iot for all and see what other you know building uh owners and managers have been achieving you know in terms of results uh because you know it's it's becoming consistent now 30 to 50 percent uh you know savings on energy a lot or less creative maintenance so you can reduce you know some of your of your operating costs as well so um yeah there's there's a lot to to do and there's a lot to to learn uh but as solutions are becoming simpler and um and you know there's a lot of of different um stages you can actually you know adopt technologies from and uh it doesn't have to be a full scale solution from the beginning it can be done step by step yeah that's definitely something that i think most of the experts they have on here advocate for start small start simple start proving the roi and then once you do that you can scale and then also when you scale initial solution usually opens up other ideas and other channels to be able to do more on top of what you've already done especially in a smart building space there's just so much you can do in one environment and i think that's always an important thing to think about especially from the onset because the infrastructure that you lay down at the beginning um is going to help contribute to the success of all those use cases down the line so um so all very very good points um for audience out there who wants to learn more follow up stay in touch maybe kind of dive in a bit further to these topics connect with you anybody on your team what's the best way that they can do that yeah so uh the best is to reach out to me connect on linkedin and um and also uh yeah we have we have an email for our team if people want to uh connect to us uh they can do so um you know on the um on the on the edge um you know uh info tessimi.com and um and i can share more information as well if we have some notes for the podcasts on how to do that fantastic well thomas thank you so much again for your time um it's been a great conversation i think our audience getting a ton of value out of it so really appreciate it and would love to find another opportunity to have you back yeah my pleasure yeah anytime thank you thanks a lot ryan bye-bye all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iot for all podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notification so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time
2022-09-06